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One afternoon I heard Mike Robinson (Archivist of North
Dakota State University), Ann Braaten (curator of the Emily Reynolds Costume
Collection), and Tricia Velure (then a History graduate student) give
a wonderful talk about the Alba Bales House. This was the practice house
for Home Economics students at North Dakota Agricultural College. The
Home Ec girls were required to spend time in residence at Alba Bales House
to demonstrate they could be competent homemakers. Judging by what alums
say, this group living was sort of a bonding experience.
They had a fair amount of fun, too, and one particular episode from 1949
caught my attention—a mock wedding. The mock wedding, you see, is
a fine old folk custom characteristic of the northern plains states and
the prairie provinces. Michael Taft, of Saskatoon, is the folklorist who
has done the field work on mock weddings in the region and published the
results in North Dakota History.
A mock wedding is a parody, a bit of folk theater in which people dress
up in ridiculous fashion and go through a ridiculous ceremony, generally
as part of a wedding anniversary observance. Often, according to Taft,
the mock wedding comes as an interruption of a banquet toast-and-roast
of the anniversary couple.
Costume is a big element in the farce. Men don dresses to play the female
parts, including the bride, and women put on trousers to play the male
parts, including the preacher. The clergyman reads from a telephone book
or a girly magazine. The father of the bride often carries a shotgun.
Another important element in a mock wedding is the vows. Taft says, “The
mock wedding is one way in which women of the community can express their
ambivalent and conflicting roles as farm wives. . . . Women are in charge
of the mock wedding in most communities; one question that interests these
women is ‘What does it mean to marry a farmer and become a farm wife?’”
The vows, then, speak for the women. Generally they are written especially
for the occasion, or as least customized to fit the couple being parodied.
Frances Wold of Bismarck wrote one set of vows in which the bride promised
to “black his eyes and bloody his nose and pull his hair and stamp
on his toes . . . and drink his beer and spend his dough and make his
life a tale of woe.” The groom, on the other hand, was to “wash
the dishes and make the bed . . . and wish to heck that you were dead.”
It’s important that the author make the vows fit the people, place,
and occasion—that is, localize them—and not just lift prepared
lines. “To localize the script,” writes Taft, “is to make
it meaningful within the context of plains and prairie agrarian society.”
Back to Alba Bales House—the occasion marked by the mock wedding
in 1949 was the birthday of one of the resident girls. She recalled, “Jeanne
wrote the ceremony in verse using Faye’s and fiancé Bob’s
names as principal characters.
“The groom, 5'2" Meta Lou,” said the birthday girl, “wore
tan corduroy trousers with brown tweed jacket, plaid skirt, tan derby,
and a boutonniere of red poppies. The victorious bride, Jeanne, chose
a simple white broadcloth gown, fully cut, and a veil of lovely used curtain
material cut with a clever jagged train. She carried a bouquet of orange
carrots and pale green celery.”
Obviously, these girls were proving themselves not only competent homemakers
but also good community-builders, capable of managing a regional ritual
in good style.
Just how common were these mock weddings on the northern plains? Have
you ever organized one? Does anybody have photographs or videotape?
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prior permission from Plains Folk.
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