Our Sepia Saturday format has changed a little for the month of August. Instead of one image per week, we have one image for the whole month and are welcomed to post as much or as little as we like during the month. It feels a bit odd for me to use one image as the source of inspiration for the whole entire month, so I think I’m going to go on-theme for the first post and then choose photos off-theme for the other three weeks. Our prompt image is a lovely, billowy wedding photo, and of course I have more than one wedding photo, but this one felt right to include this week. My photo here is of the marriage of Garret Fylstra and Gertrude Meyer on 31 March 1926 in Paterson, New Jersey. They were married by the Rev James Holwerda at the Christian Reformed Church of Midland Park, New Jersey. Our happy couple is on the left side of the image while their two witnesses, James de Waal Malefyt and Jessie Meyer on the right. Jessie is Gertrude’s sister and James married Jessie and Gertrude’s cousin not even a year prior. To make things a little more complicated, their cousin was also their step sibling since after Jessie and Gertrude’s mother died, their father married their mother’s sister who had also just lost her spouse. It makes for an interesting and complicated family tree but wasn’t something completely unheard of during that time.
Gertrude is my husband’s grandmother, and she lived to age 93, passing away on 4 November 1996. She outlived her husband by almost 30 years, and they had 9 children together, two of whom didn’t live past infancy. My photo may not be quite as billowy and romantic as our prompt image, but it’s a pretty wedding nonetheless!
