Let’s talk about the wedding, reception and the honeymoon. We were married at the end of summer in 1964 in the Salt Lake LDS temple. Their extension had not yet been built and there were limited marriage rooms. Our wedding was the day after school ended at BYU, and 90 other happy couples were waiting to be married. We entered the temple at 7 am with our family and friends hoping to have a wedding brunch around 11 am at the nearby Hotel Utah. The only problem was because of the backlog of weddings scheduled that day, we didn’t get out of the temple till around 5 pm. My mom, the brunch hostess waiting outside the temple was beside herself.
Our reception was scheduled the next evening at the newly finished BYU Alumni House in Provo. All went smoothly there until the reception line formed and my cowboy cousin Bill came through the line. He wanted to talk privately with the groom and quickly whisked my new husband away to an undisclosed destination. Noticing my groom’s absence, Bill talked me into leaving my reception to go and find my better half. Looking back now, I see my cousin was just continuing an age-old family tradition of chivarees.
As newlyweds, we started out married life as poor college students in a rented one-bedroom apartment in Provo with no furniture and little cash. A honeymoon? It was spent painting second hand furniture we bought from Deseret Industries and setting up our first home with used furnishings given us from my new in-laws’ rental apartments. Our wedding night was spent in our new home cleaning off honey from the toilet seat after first discovering it by sitting on it and then remaking our bed which had been short-sheeted. More chivareeing from the best man and his wife who somehow got into our house and quickly did some mischief to help us celebrate our new marriage!
Then began the adjustment to having a new permanent roommate or spouse. Somehow living 24/7 with a person of the opposite sex is not the same as it was having college roommates. As newlyweds, we shared everything from the same tube of toothpaste to laundry chores. This was “real life” and not meant to be easy, but no one had prepared us for this before we married or for little else.