My first memory of a fancy wedding is drawn from the  Zion Lutheran Church in Hummelstown, PA, a lovely edifice with stained glass windows, a pipe organ, and a bell tower. I was nine years old when I attended Mary and Howard Landis’ wedding there.

Howard & Mary Landis Wedding Day: June 4, 1950

My dad’s cousin, Mary Martin, married Howard Landis in this sanctuary in June 1950. A fuzzy snap (from Aunt Ruthie’s movie camera) after the service shows my grandma Fannie Martin Longenecker happily chatting with Mary’s older sister, Evelyn. “Honey” was her nickname, a sobriquet which matched her heart-shaped hat brim. Plain and fancy together here. What a contrast!

Before the exchange of vows, a soloist probably sang “I Love You Truly,” a wedding song my dad echoed in a wobbly falsetto, an octave or two higher than his naturally bass voice— mimicking this popular melody. Believe it or not, I do recall Daddy reflecting on the wedding of his second cousin singing this tune in our home days later.

In contrast to what I viewed at a fanciful wedding, nuptials at Bossler Mennonite Church were far more simple. 

First of all, the building was plain, rectangular in shape. Not even shutters adorned the clear-paned windows. A barn with silo in the field beyond the cemetery reflects the church’s rural location.

Likewise, the interior was simple. Back then, not even a back-lit cross adorned the area behind the pulpit as it does in recent days. And certainly not a tapestry on the wall, even a religious one.

The brides that walked down the aisle probably looked similar to Ruth Longenecker Weaver. Ruth married John Weaver in the 1950s, Wearing a white taffeta dress in this photo, she looks lovingly at her groom after the ceremony.

Church rules would have forbidden a floral bouquet back then. Ruth carried a white Bible accessorized with ribbons and perhaps a lace handkerchief.

Wedding of Ruth Longenecker and John Weaver, 1950s

Songs popular at Mennonite weddings in the 1950s included “O Perfect Love” . . .

. . . and “Tread Softly, Tread Softly, the Master is Here.”

Couples sometimes selected “Tread Softly” for the bride’s short walk down the aisle toward the pulpit. I can picture a shy but smiling bride walking softly—and slowly—down the aisle to meet her groom at the altar. (You can find this song scribed with shaped notes on page 185 in the 1953 edition of The Mennonite Church Hymnal.)

Incidentally, the musical notation uses the word “gently” to describe the mood of the piece,

We may have tried to tread softly during our own wedding recessional, but we absolutely did not tread slowly after our marriage service on August 5, 1967, at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC.

Fifty-nine years ago this month!

Walking down the aisle, we are glowing, but in the years to come, like others, we experienced lights and darks, peaks and valleys, as told in my memoir

My second memoir, My Checkered Life   Find it HERE

Welcome! Your thoughts about weddings in any decade