Week 23: Wedding Bells

 Wedding Bells

The Brentwood United Church bells rang on June 11, 1949 when two local families were united in marriage with the wedding of William John Allen married Pearl Mary Eveleen Schell (my parents).  The groom was known as Jack and the bride Sis by family and friends.  Both families had lived in Brentwood for generations and there are still family members, on both sides, living in that small hamlet in Simcoe County, Ontario. 

 
George & Irene (nee Bates) Schell, Sis (nee Schell) & Jack Allen, Gertie (nee Cooper) & Harry Allen
 
The bride was only 19 and the groom was 26 and had dated for a few years before getting engaged in 1948.  Being from the same small community, they had known each other all their lives.  The wedding party included the groom's brothers Les (as Best Man), Ivan (as an Usher) and sister Mary as flower girl.  The bride's sister Lena was Maid of Honour and their brother Bud was an usher.
 
The reception took on the front lawn of the bride's parents' farm.  Wedding guests travelled from as far as Detroit Michigan for the "grand" occasion.  The multi-tiered wedding cake (traditional fruit cake) was made by the bride's mother.  In 1995, when my mother made the fruit cake for my wedding cake, she used the pillars from her wedding cake to raise the tiers.
 
The groom was welcomed into the bride's extended family and the bride into the groom's extended family.  Even years after my father had died (in 1990), at family reunions when the Allen siblings gathered for a family photo, they insisted in my mother being in the picture to represent the missing Jack.  Even decades later, they still treated her as a sibling, not an in-law.
 
The Allen family (as of June 11, 1949)
Harry & Gertie with their 10 children & their spouses 
 
Growing up, I was accustomed to seeing family photos either hung on the wall, or kept in photo albums.  But I had never seen the above photo of the Allens and spouses until the photo display at the funeral of my Aunt Helen (wife of Dad's brother Ab).  The fact that a very large copy of this photo was part of the collection of a brother illustrates the closeness of my father's siblings.  Also, the esteem they held for my parents.  It was the first church wedding of that generation for both families.  Prior to that, the bride and groom got married at the church Manse or courthouse in a private ceremony.  My parents' wedding was the first to be in a church with a wedding party and guests in attendance and the bride in a white wedding dress and veil.
 
My parents' wedding may have been the first big scale wedding in the family, but it certainly was not the last.  There are over 30 first cousins in my generation and most of us had 'The Big Wedding' with family members in attendance.  Depending on finances, sometimes only the aunts/uncles were invited to the reception dinner and cousins to the dance after the dinner.  In those cases, the cousins often got together and went to a local restaurant for dinner between the ceremony and dance. 
 
 
 


 

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