HOW TO DO A SOUTHERN WEDDING

TAYLOR AND GARRETT

There are many things about the south that astound me, baffle me, irritate me and tickle me. They are sophisticated well beyond a Midwest design aesthetic. They can cling to their religious morality and then vote for a vulgar misogynist. They can smile and tell you "Well bless your heart" and mean it with the best southern charm.

Last week Rick's grand-niece got married in Rossville, Georgia.

We drove eleven hours through the flatlands of Illinois to the hills and then mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee before arriving in Chattanooga, TN a little suburb of Rossville.

We came loaded with sixteen antique ironstone pitchers,

twenty-four vintage pink and amber wine glasses, thirty-five matching vintage water glasses, twenty-six Nippon porcelain plates, three vintage linen tablecloths, four piece silver flatware settings for twenty-four and one bridesmaid.

Southern weddings have a flavor all their own and Taylor and Garrett proved that theirs would taste as good as piece of fried chicken.

It was initially scheduled as an outdoor event but three days of rain had made the outdoor location more of a bog than a surface that wouldn't get your highheels sucked into that red Georgia clay  Add to that a heat index well into the nineties and a humidity level strong enough to melt the bride's mascara and give the groomsmen under arm perspiration stains the size of Texas.

The wedding got moved indoors and we were, of course, brought in as former prom committee members to help with the decorations. If you've got two gay uncles you might as well put them to good use.

The day of the wedding we swaged yards and yards of toile and muslin tied up some twigs with wired ribbon and twine

added an arbor made from branches and the scene was set for the perfect country wedding

good enough for a feature in Guns & Gardens.

No wedding in the south is devoid of religion and this was established the minute you entered the venue where a family bible was set out asking you to highlight your favorite verse. I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings so I passed on what would possibly have been my number one hypocritical faux pas. I probably would have unknowingly highlighted something about Sodom and Gomorrah, or Judas anyway.

I did find it comforting to see that the girl's headquarters had been delivered three huge bouquets festooned with dozens of Trojan Magnum condoms. These kids were way too young to be thinking about a family but safe reproduction free sex was alright with me.

There's a tradition in these southern weddings to have relatives presenting the older generations, present and represented in some novel form. Most do it with a table of pictures but our niece did it with food. Desserts.

Mama Deb's red velvet cake

Nona's Coca Cola cake

Nanny's wedding cookies

and Grammy's coconut cake

The bride chose the traditional white and let's just say she rode the bull all the way to the altar. She was gorgeous.

The men wore cowboy boots, jeans, and linen jackets holding boutonnieres made from shell casings.

Then they all donned the prerequisite cowboy hats for the final dance.

It couldn't have been a better send off if the Dukes of Hazard had tied the knot and peeled out through a column of sparklers

As a guest, who wouldn't want one of Mom's  choco-scutterbotch cookies

and a Wild Turkey induced shimmy

















THE GALLERY

Charles James Evening Dresses, French & Co.,Vogue,
New York, 1948
Cecil Beaton, photographer
Represented by Staley-Wise