Marriage: Kenneth and Marian

Kenneth and Marian were married at 8 am on Monday, September 4th, 1939, in the flower-decorated living room of the Christian Church parsonage in Winterset, Madison Co., Iowa. The Rev. Thomas William Foglesong (1895-1978) presided over the wedding ceremony. One of the two newspaper write-ups about the marriage states that Marian was given in marriage to Kenneth, though there was no one from Marian's family in attendance to do the 'giving.'

One of the newspaper articles printed the following paragraph: "The young couple was attended by the groom's sister, Miss Nadine Garrett (191 7-1999) and George Kunz (1914-2007), of Des Moines. The bride and bridesmaid wore corsages of gardenias. Other guests were the groom's parents, Dr. and Mrs. H. U. Garrett, of St. Charles, and Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Kunz and daughter, June (1913-1956), of Milwaukee."

Marian is shown in the pictures as wearing a dark-colored, short-sleeved dress the hem of which ended just below the knee. She has a watch on her left wrist and appears to have a ring on the third finger of her left hand. She has a simple pillbox type hat on her head, and a flowing corsage on the left side of her dress. She is wearing pumps with about 4-inch heels. In the pictures after the wedding, Kenneth is wearing a double-breasted suit with striped tie and a corsage is placed on his left lapel. His left hand is not shown in any of the pictures that were probably taken outside of the parsonage. It is not known who took the pictures, though it was probably not a professional photographer.

Marian's wedding ring was a simple gold band, and as far as I know there was no engagement ring. Kenneth got her wedding ring through a catalog as I found out to my embarrassment many years later. I was about 16 and sitting with my parents in the living room of our house in Colfax. I was thumbing through a Sears catalog and made fun of the rings for sale, wondering aloud who would ever buy wedding and engagement rings through the catalog. There was no response, but when I looked up my mother Marian was pointing to the ring on her finger. Her wedding band was lost at the Hillcrest Nursing Home in Minnetonka, Minnesota, in about 1996. At the time her fingers were so thin that the ring must have just slipped off. The ring was never recovered. My mother had not realized it was missing and showed no emotion at its loss. My dad had a ring, but I believe it was a Masonic ring rather than a wedding band.

After the ceremony and congratulations, Kenneth and Marian left by automobile to travel to Chicago and to Wisconsin and then to return to Lorimor where they were to live in the Donner apartment.

Floye wrote in her diary that day, "Well, I'm a mother-in-law - how do I look? We all went over to Winterset and Tom Foglesong married Kenny and Marian. Hope we have raised our li'l boy to be a good husband. They left immediately for Chicago and Wisconsin. The rest of us came home and the Kunz family and Nadine left at 2:30. Mrs. Clarke came over and helped with the dishes. I wrote the wedding for the papers also to Chick - letters from Hallie and Lorraine but as yet I owes 'em. Blanche Roberts Dowler waded into the Fee boys at the corner west of town. Sent the boys to the hospital and wrecked the cars."

I never knew why the wedding was not held in Antigo, Wisconsin, Marian's hometown or why none of her relatives came to the wedding. Marian's surviving sister Mildred was not able to add any information when asked about it. Marian does not look sad in the wedding pictures, but it must have been difficult for her nonetheless.

Nadine Garrett and George Kunz were later engaged and then married on June 1, 1940. By comparison, there was considerably more 'buzz' in Floye's entries in her diary about the engagement, preparations, and wedding, but Floye was still not overly demonstrative in writing about Nadine's wedding day either.

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