June weddings? Not in my family. But in January, our youngest son married in a splendid church wedding. His beautiful bride’s generous family included us every step of the way, and we are delightfully family-ized around the happy couple.  (Adjectives on steroids just go with a wedding. Have you ever seen Katharine Hepburn gush at the end of The Philadelphia Story?)

The Dream Dress still hangs in my closet. My mother ordered it from Montgomery Ward in 1940, and she couldn’t resist taking needle and thread and adding her own flourish.

Question: What makes a wedding perfect?

Answer: A few decades.

My parents, Clarence and Dalma Morrow had a midnight wedding, May 19, 1940 with just two attendants, and the preacher and pianist.  All this happened by candlelight at the First Baptist Church, Presidio, Texas.  It was a pre-war wedding, but not so different from a lot of war weddings which so distinguished the 1940s. On Clarence and Dalma’s first date, they walked in the moonlight over the Rio Grande bridge to Ojinaga, Mexico for a Diez y Seis party and a promenade around Ojinaga’s plaza.

By May of the next year, my mother’s parents in Alpine had met the groom, my dad, but were not won over. Upon seeing my mother’s engagement ring in March, Grandmother said to my mother, “You don’t need that.” They declined to make the 90-mile trip to their only daughter’s wedding. Perhaps we can understand: Highway 67 between Marfa and Presidio was not yet paved, plus my grandparents did not lean toward the sort of frivolity my mother was so fond of. Another reason was a mantra in my family: “Some people have to get up and go to work in the morning.” Meaning, of course that they did.

Looking for something old to offer our January bride, I found in Mother’s cedar chest pieces of dried flowers and gift cards from her wedding. My grandparents weren’t the only non-fans of Clarence: one of Mother’s college friends had sent her a sympathy card.

I asked Mother many times why the midnight hour, and without fail, she said, “it seemed like the thing to do.” Her teaching year ended the 18^th and Daddy’s first day of vacation was the 19^th so they immediately began their vacation/honeymoon. They drove to Alpine for breakfast with my grandparents, and then on Highway 90 towards El Paso. Get Interstate 10 out of your head because it won’t exist for another 20 years or so. The two lane road to El Paso was straight and lonesome, taking four hours and including a time change.  In their 1936 Pontiac, they began a two-week road trip/ honeymoon  through New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.

Heading towards El Paso, the newlyweds picked up a young hitchhiker, which my dad was wont to do back then, and the boy traveled on with them. As could only happen on a desert highway, one of the cars they encountered coming from El Paso was driven by my mother’s brother. Naturally, they all stopped on two sides of the road. My uncle was incredulous that in just a few hours his sister had married in Presidio, breakfasted with the folks in Alpine, and who was this kid in the back seat?

That perfect wedding that lasted 51 years.  My first year in college, I decided it would be a funny joke to call my parents at midnight May 19 and wish them Happy Anniversary. I was told in clipped words that I was not the first person to do that.

I suppose the midnight hour is secure as the purview of the young. And people do still have to get up and go to work in the morning.

Bonnie and Clyde ain’t got nothin’ on my parents shown here clowning around by  their 1936 Pontiac coupe.