My uncle is writing his memoirs.  He is in his very young eighties and figures he has ten more years to get this done. He says he is writing them for his kids, and by that he means, not only his kids but also me and my kids and his grand-kids, but mostly for the youngest of us.  His stories unfold with the facts and events that he thinks we will find interesting, most of which are incredibly different from things that we might experience today.

He told me some of what happened on the day that he married my aunt, to whom he will have been married to for almost sixty years.  They married not too many years after WW II in a very small town in Germany, near the border of the Czech Republic.  My Uncle was from East Berlin, and had found himself far from his home after being a prisoner of war during the war’s final stages.  That, of course, is another story.  The only thing he had in common with the majority of people in this new, small town were his German roots, and they had a very different set of traditions than this city boy was aware of.

Nonetheless, he was marrying one of their fairest maidens.  He picked her up in a horse drawn carriage to take her to the church on their wedding day. “Very cool,” I’m thinking.  After the ceremony, as they traveled to the reception in the carriage they were prepared for the interruption of their journey by a pack of kids that had strung a rope across the road, who were waiting for the shower of coins that the newlyweds would toss, to assure their safe journey on the road ahead.  “Doubly cool,” I’m thinking, ready to hear what happened at the reception to complete the story.   When I inquired about it, “Well,” said my uncle, “I am not going to write about what we ate or did after our wedding; it was just like every other wedding, who cares about that?”  Those were the interesting facts after all , and different to what might happen today.

I felt deflated, I wanted to hear more detail, so I asked my aunt what she remembered about her wedding. Well she said “It was tradition that at the reception the bride would be secretly stolen away from her husband and once he discovered her missing he would search the town for her. She would be taken to another restaurant and of course be easily found and recovered to start her new life with her husband.”

“But”, she continued, “he stuck to me like glue and no one was able to steal me away, I really wish that I could have had that experience” she finished sadly.

“That is not too cool,” I’m thinking.

I was curious - I wondered if my uncle knew about this tradition, so I asked.

“No, I never knew that”, he said.

There are never two weddings that are the same, and everyone has their own traditions and stories and memories and details that come from them.  Each is special in their own way, and it is always fun and interesting to learn what people thought of them.  We love to have wedding guests staying at the Stanford Terrace Inn. They bring with them a buzz of excitement and joy, and we reward them by taking care of the details entrusted to us, with the care and attention they deserve.  Don’t hesitate to let us know your favorite stories… or share a private thought about your own.  Love is in the air, as it reverberates from Valentine’s…. did any of our friends or family or neighbors get engaged?  We hope you celebrated the day with someone you love.  At the very least, keep your ears open and you can learn something new about love and tradition! =)

Namaste,

Barbara