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“At the September meeting, we held a ‘mock
wedding’ which has become a German-Russian custom, especially in
North Dakota at 25th Anniversary parties. Everyone who attended had a
great time and some good clean fun teasing each other about our ‘reversed
roles’ in the wedding.”
This notice appeared in a 2003 newsletter of the Inland Northwest Chapter
of the Germans from Russia Heritage Society, which meets in Spokane, Washington,
and includes many folks with North Dakota roots. It indicates the continuing
currency of a custom I talked about in a previous column—the mock
wedding, in which gender roles are reversed, costumes and dialog concocted,
in friendly satire of the institution of marriage.
The mock wedding is, of course, a German-Russian custom. Also a Norwegian
custom, a German custom, and an Anglo-American custom. It is a regional
phenomenon. In my previous piece I wrote about the mock wedding staged
by college girls in Alba Bales House, the home economics homemaking lab
at North Dakota Agricultural College. Now, here’s an account of a
mock wedding in Mooreton, North Dakota, in 1928, as recorded in a published
history of Richland County.
In August 1928 two young people from Mooreton, Lloyd McDougall and Genevieve
Early, were married in Minneapolis. The groom was of Yankee stock, a Congregationalist
family. The bride was a Catholic girl who had earned a teaching degree
from the University of North Dakota and was teaching over in Minnesota.
For those days, it was a distinctly mixed marriage.
About a week after the wedding the couple had a wedding dance for their
friends back in Mooreton. To their surprise, the affair was rudely but
happily interrupted by a mock wedding. While the band for the dance, the
Johnny Starius Orchestra, played “Here Comes the Bride,” a bogus
minister, played by a chap named Hans Borgen, commenced the ceremony.
Most of the parts, male and female, were played by women. Carolyn Henkenius
and Ella Bagg impersonated the parents of the groom. A flower girl, Rema
Lenzen, strewed the floor with buckwheat. Helen Kloeppel played the bride,
and Mabel Hoffman played the groom. Agnes Breuer bore the ring, and Amelia
Henkenius carried flowers, daisies.
Bridesmaids were Merle Evensen and Elizabeth Henkenius, each carrying
wild sunflowers, and there were two best men, Rose Kloeppel and Margaret
Kloeppel.
After the mock ceremony, participants went over to a business known as
the Magnet, owned by the Lenzen family, and changed into more proper attire
to dance the night away.
I mention all these names for a couple of reasons. First, there were various
extended-family ties among the participants in the mock wedding. Second,
the cast of the caper were a mixed lot, ethnically speaking. Research
on their surnames reveals Austrians, Norwegians, and Anglo-Americans,
reflecting the ethnic mix of the community. The mock wedding was a folk
institution that bridged ethnic divisions—and evidently provided
no end of fun and hilarity for participants. I’d love to talk with
other people who have taken part in mock weddings in this part of the
country.
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