Outdoor Wedding Party, Small-Town America, 1950s

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Outdoor Wedding Party, Small-Town America, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Outdoor Wedding Party, Small-Town America, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1958

AA-2026-00DB71

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A groom in a light grey double-breasted suit holds his bride's hand on a suburban lawn, the two of them laughing at something happening just off to the right — which is to say, they are not looking at the camera, and the person with the camera has decided this is fine, recording a moment of genuine happiness in an era when most wedding portraits required everyone to stand like they were waiting for a bus. The bride's satin gown and finger-tip veil are impeccably 1950s, built for a church ceremony and an afternoon reception in someone's backyard, the whole occasion underwritten by the postwar conviction that the correct response to surviving the previous decade was to get married on a nice lawn as quickly as possible. The bridesmaid's mint-green satin dress with its wide sailor collar is the kind of garment a woman agreed to wear because friendship demanded it and because in the 1950s nobody had yet invented the custom of pretending bridesmaids' dresses were wearable again. The best man in navy flannel stands slightly apart, grinning at whatever has pulled the bridal couple's attention, which suggests the photographer was not the funniest person present that afternoon.

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