Old photos are hard for me to ignore (..you've guessed that already? ☺). On top of that, the former florist in me is logically attracted to wedding flowers....which equals a whole bunch of submitted wedding pics from the atlases that I had to scan and show you.
Most brides try to look their best on their wedding day, and by the 1920s in America, current fashions were a big part of it. I didn't realize before finding these pics how things had changed: grandma Lizzie Sand Hesch was married in 1910 in a usable dress--one she could and did wear later. It was practical, and the custom then.
By the time my Janson grandparents got married, in 1913, grandma Margaret Naber wore a fancy white dress bought just for that occasion, and never worn again. (Altho, the Nabers were fairly wealthy, which had something to do with it, no doubt).
These photos aren't of relatives, but they were all married in the 1920s in Morrison county, Mn. This decade was right after the War to End All Wars, WWI. From our vantage point some 90 years in the future, we know it was during Prohibition and before the stock market crashed in 1929; before the dust bowl years of the 1930s and the Great Depression. Farms in Morrison were settled (the pioneer period was over), and they were producing well and were being inherited by the first generation born here. These couples mostly had large families, tho not as large as the families they came from. There was a sense of well-being, I think, and a desire to display an optimism and bounty that didn't appear again till after WWII.
Can we really deduce all that from a few wedding pictures? Sure.
Look at the bouquets--which I think were not fresh flowers unless the wedding was in the summer or fall. I'm pretty sure these lush, graceful bouquets were created by the millinery in Buckman or Pierz or Little Falls.
It's just common sense that business in a hat shop would be sparse--how often do you need a new hat? But what they also offered was hat trimming--flowers you could use in your wedding bouquet, and then later on your best new hat.
This is my theory an' I'm stickin' to it.
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