Blast from the Past

I got a phone call out of the blue the other night from a long-lost first cousin in Michigan, who told me they'd been looking for me for a couple of years (for genealogical purposes).  Oddly enough, her existence came my way within this past year and I spent some time trying to find her, with no luck.  Didn't help that I didn't have her married name. Unfortunately, the email addy she gave me doesn't work, but I do have her phone number and that of another cousin near Atlanta, so I can reach her once my land line disappears. And it will disappear.

Anyway -- through the course of that conversation she told me she had my wedding photo announcement from the local newspaper.  Now, I didn't even know this existed!  You'd think my mother, or grandmother, or somebody who was still in Cedartown a few days after the wedding, would have clipped this and sent it to me. And maybe they did -- let's give them the benefit of the doubt.  However, I have no memory of ever having seen this and I have no memory of even sitting for the photo.

It wasn't a fancy wedding (newspaper hype not-withstanding), and I have no idea who took the photo or how the info got to the newspaper, but clearly, it did.  Yesterday was the first chance I had to go to the library and hit their microfilm library. Didn't take long at all to find this -- after all, while I don't remember the photo, I do remember the event and the date. I look a bit terrified -- but I think that was because I was uncomfortable in front of the camera, a state that continues to this day. I like being behind a camera, not in front of one.

The print from microfilm isn't very good, but I just had to post this because I think it's such a kick.  I was 18 years old, newly returned to Cedartown from Germany, where I'd lived on a big army base with my mom and military dad.  I designed the dress, such as it was, and my mom made it. The lace jacket came off to reveal a simple scooped-neck cocktail-length dress made of what is essentially parachute silk, or as the article calls it, cloud silk.  I can't remember what happened to the dress exactly -- I know I gave it to somebody a couple of years later, but I don't remember who. It may have been the daughter of a family I knew in Germany. Somebody who needed a prom dress or something.

Oh, for a return to even a partial size as that! I had an 18-inch waist and weighed under 100 lbs. Alas, that will never happen again.