Satire: Great Depression Wedding

Tips & Tricks for a Great Depression Wedding

By Christine Stoddard
QuailBellMagazine.com

Elegant modesty. Admirable frugality. Vast imagination. These are the traits of a wedding theme none of your bridesmaids will dare rival come their 'special day': The Great Depression Wedding. Any nostalgic lady will agree that the past was simply better. That includes a past famous for malnutrition, lost family fortunes, and obsessive canning of even the most worm-eaten fruits.

Honor history by helping your wedding guests relive the tantalizing terror of the world's best-known stock market crash. As soon as your guests step through the church door, have the flower girl and ring bearer strip them of their furs and pearls. Even the biggest twit knows that a wife beater and suspenders are best for such an occasion, anyway. You don't want the broads competing with your bridal glory, either. Teach them that in a time of immense economic need, frivolity just won't be tolerated. You have gangsters on either side of the altar, and each one wants his moll to look like Greta Garbo. Any Joe or dame who resists gets a Chicago overcoat, pronto. They need to learn what the next ten years are going to be all about.

Now that the Roaring Twenties have skidded to a halt, direct your guests to the giggle juice. The days of sly speakeasies are over and, besides, nobody wants to think about the holes in their pockets. Best yet, the incognito coppers, gumshoes, and gold-diggers will repay you later if you get every guest swigging moonshine before the ceremony. You like Lincolns and Sawbucks, right? So do the goons bruising your groom.

Your bridal party should lead the guests to your father, a.k.a Frankie R. He should be confined to a wheelchair in the corner of the church, with a microphone glued to his chin. Your mother should be there at his side, trying to butt into your father's Fireside Chats, before your guests decide to retract their wedding gifts of matches and tin watering cans. Your father, while a well-spoken man, occasionally does ramble.

At last, your guests can be seated, so they can bawl their eyes out over your off the cob vows and then party like it's 1939. 

There shouldn't be, of course, any decorations in the church, save for a wilted daisy or dandelion here and there. The lackluster flowers beautifully echo the sentiments of the decade, appearing in soggy bunches at the ends of pews. This way, all guests can turn their attention to you—the one and only butter and egg fly on location.

Since bridal gowns often cost as much as flivvers, opt for something more budget-friendly, and ditch spending a whole day at the tailor's, too. Go for a burlap sack instead. Timeless and universally flattering, the burlap sack comes in a soft beige tone and fits ladies of all sizes. Don't let the beads and lace of a designer gown distract your guests from the fact that you're cute as a bug's ear.

Speaking of your looks, you should learn how to do your make-up the Great Depression way: don't wear anything, except a few artfully placed dabs of dirt. Be sure to highlight those blinkers and cheekbones. Only cheap dolls and muffins wear fire-engine red lipstick, but if that's what you are, indulge! It's never a brodie to look like a sweet mama tomato. Styling your hair is a piece of cake, too—just roll out of the gutter and you're ready to go.

After the ceremony comes to an end and your new husband finishes dodging the trigger men, show your guests a ring-a-ding-ding. Bring out more rot gut and send them through the soup kitchen. As for cake, just sprinkle some sugar onto whatever the soup kitchen gives you. If there's no sugar, close your eyes tight enough and that moldy potato will turn into cake. Convince your guests to do the same and you won't have to worry about getting icing smeared all over your face.

Après le soup kitchen, cue a clam-bake for the cats and alligators if you can afford it. You can have a hoot just watching the cement mixers trip across the dance floor. 

When the rag finally fades, you and your pip better scram. By this point, you'll be joed. Don't let the gobble-pipe fool you.

And remember—it's not a honeymoon. It's a Hoovermoon. A trip to a quiet, secluded alleyway will provide all the Great Depression era romance you could ever crave. Yet if you really must travel (and are fortunate enough to have found an abandoned vegetable wagon and stray horse), check out the Dust Bowl. Nothing says the Dirty Thirties like the breath-taking, cough-inducing beauty of Oooooooklahoma. With dust clouds obscuring everything in sight, making whoopee in privacy should be a cinch.

May your marriage last at least as long as Hitler's reign! With Beaver Cleaver and Captain Kangaroo in your future, you'll want to make it out of World War II and into the 1950s.