If you’ve been to a wedding recently, you may have noticed that the production has become a bit more elaborate than the ones you remember. According to The Knot, a wedding planning website, the average cost of a wedding today is $34,200. Kansas celebrations average closer to $23,000. Still costly enough to melt a Visa card. But when my parents tied the knot in 1944, they spent less than it now costs the bride’s father for a bottle of champagne.
Mom and Dad’s wedding took place on July 23 of that year. It was blisteringly hot. And because World War II was raging, many common items were rationed for American shoppers.
My grandmother borrowed a cup of rationed sugar from a neighbor to bake a little wedding cake. It was quite small, but there were only a couple dozen guests, so everyone got a slice. Family members who lived further away sent their regrets and saved their rationed gasoline.
There was no venue expense because the reception was held in my grandparents’ backyard. More specifically, in my grandmother’s rose garden. Live flowers were all around, so there was no need for any pricey floral arrangements.
The writer’s parents, Jimmy and Martha Norris, and posing with Jimmy’s V-8 Ford, which was later used to rush his best man to catch a train back to his wartime post in Houston.
My mom wore a simple white dress and my dad put on his black winter suit. So there was no expensive bridal gown or tux rental. No wedding planner, either. No caterer, no photographer, no limo, no band, no mirror ball, no chicken dance and no honeymoon trip to an exotic location. In the wedding snapshot taken on someone’s box camera, Mom and Dad’s little homemade cake had become a bit lop-sided from sitting in the direct sun.
At the time, my grandfather’s health problems prevented him from operating the family farm, so my dad was designated to stay home and keep it running while his brother went to war. Most of Dad’s best friends were also somewhere overseas. But his buddy Warren Jacks, who had been a KU medical student, was now stationed at a Navy hospital in Houston. Dad asked him to be his best man, and Warren got a weekend pass to come home for the wedding. After the reception in the backyard rose garden, the newlyweds’ first priority was driving the Navy medic to the train station, so he could get back to his base before his pass expired.
After finishing their slices of cake, the bride, the groom and the best man all climbed into my dad’s V-8 Ford and headed for the train station. But when they got there, the train had already departed, and the next one wouldn’t get Warren back to Houston before the deadline. So they jumped back into the car and headed south to the next train stop, in Oklahoma. They nearly got to the station in time, but again missed the train by a few seconds.
Dad’s V-8 still had half a tank of rationed gas. So they all piled back into it and burned rationed rubber to the next train station, further south in Oklahoma. The best man was at the wheel this time, mashing the accelerator to the floor, with newlyweds holding on for dear life in the back seat. They got there just in time.
The train had just started moving out of the station. So Warren jumped onto the nearest car, waved to the newlyweds and ducked inside. And that’s the moment when my dad realized that his car keys were still in the pants pocket of the Navy medic’s dress whites.
Dad sprinted after the moving train and jumped aboard. Mom said he came walking back down the tracks half an hour later, looking a little disheveled in his hot black wedding suit. But he grinned and held up the car keys like a freshly won Olympic medal.
The honeymoon had begun. And it continued for the next 70 years.
Contact Joe Norris at joe.norris47@gmail.com.
