A New Year's Day Wedding
Family wedding dresses and treasured heirlooms
Release date: January 3, 2025
The wedding of Howard and Elvira
My grandparents, Elvira Stelljes and Howard Semerau were married on January 1, 1933 at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in New Ulm, MN. It was a Sunday wedding, so the ceremony took place at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
Grandma’s father, Henry Stelljes, had passed away just short of two years earlier, so she chose her eldest brother, Erich, to walk her down the aisle and give her away. Her other five brothers, Waldemar, Edwin, Otis, Carl and Harold, were also part of the wedding.
Otis, who was a professor of music at the local college, performed the music for the ceremony — Lohengrin’s wedding march as a processional and Mendelssoh’s wedding march as the recessional.
Grandpa didn’t have any brothers, so Waldemar and Carl served as his groomsmen, and Edwin and Harold were the ushers. The third usher was Grandma’s cousin, Harold Klatt.
Grandma chose Grandpa’s sister, Myrtle, as her maid of honor and her cousin, Ruth Klatt, as her senior bridesmaid. Grandpa’s other two sisters, Leona and Viola, were not part of the wedding. Leona, his oldest sister was married and expecting her first child, and Viola was just 16.
That said, Grandma decided to have her nieces, twelve-year-old Oneida and six-year-old Carryl Stelljes as junior bridesmaids.Each of the female attendants wore a different color dress.
Although Grandma was already a skilled seamstress by the time she got married — she handmade all of her undergarments for the wedding — her wedding dress was handmade by a local seamstress of white bridal satin. And she wore a fashionable tulle veil with a lace cap and long veil which had been made by her mother.
The other thing Grandma wore at her wedding was a diamond and pearl lavaliere which had been worn by her only sister, Lunita, at her wedding to Henry Dietz on April 11, 1917. Despite the 15-year difference in their age, Grandma and her sister were close, and Lunita’s death in 1918 was a wound which never entirely healed for young Elvira.
And no wonder given the circumstances, some of which were shared in Lunita’s obituary which was published in the local paper.
Mrs. Henry Dietz, nee Lunita Stelljes, departed this life at the Loretto Hospital on Saturday, 5:30 a.m. Death was due to pneumonia, from which she had suffered from Thursday evening, April 11. Her case is one of the saddest that has been brought to our attention of late.
The deceased, although in a delicate condition, expecting soon to become a mother, on Wednesday last attended a birthday party at the home of her father-in-law, Mr. J. Dietz. She helped with the work and was apparently quite well. The next day was the first anniversary of her wedding day; on that day she was stricken with pneumonia and on Friday was taken to the Loretto Hospital. There she drew her last breath early Saturday morning, after hours of intense suffering during which the babe was delivered, still-born.
Mother and child were buried together in the same casket, Lunita in her wedding dress and the little girl in the christening gown she never had the chance to wear. The funeral took place on what would have been Lunita’s 25th birthday.
My grandma was just 10 when her big sister died. Fifteen years later, their mother, my great grandmother, gifted Grandma Lunita’s necklace on the eve of her wedding to Grandpa. (If you look closely at the photo, you can see the heirloom on Grandma’s neck.)
Fifty-three years later, Grandma gifted it to me on the eve of my own wedding.
Black dress, white dress
When my mom, Renola Semerau Wegner, passed away in 2013, I inherited a bunch of boxes which she’d inherited when my grandparents had died 17 years earlier. It took me years to make my way through them all — partly because of the sadness they evoked in me, and partly because of…well…life.
In the fall of 2019, I came across a small rectangular box sealed with yellowed cellophane tape. Written in Grandma’s hand were the words, “My Mother’s Wedding Dress”.
My assumption was the dress inside the box had belonged to Grandma’s mom, Maggie Gareis. I had a photo of Maggie and Henry on their wedding day in 1891, and in it, Maggie was wearing a beautiful black wedding dress and elaborate jacket with a flowered headpiece and long white veil.
Maggie had three sisters, and each of the Gareis girls was married in a black wedding dress. Ditto for most of my other female family members of the day, this despite the popularity of white wedding dresses which had begun with Queen Victoria’s wedding gown in 1840.
So, imagine my surprise when I tenderly pulled back the layers of tissue paper and found MY grandma’s white wedding dress and veil inside!
Grandma once told me she weighed just 92 pounds on her wedding day, and holding her still beautiful dress up to my much larger body, I definitely knew that to be true. I couldn’t even fit my wrist into the sleeve, though the lace cap was a perfect fit.
The dress is spotless, and, although there has been some aging of the fabric, it is still in near-perfect condition. Today, the dress, veil and cap are stored in special acid-free paper, and kept in a museum-quality storage box, however, the ultimate plan is to hire a professional to restore and preserve these treasured family heirlooms, and then display them in my home alongside wedding photos of my grandparents.
A wedding cake for the ages
My grandparents chose to have both a white almond bridal cake and a German Chocolate groom cake at their wedding, however many couples of the day served guests a wedding cake, and that cake was traditionally a fruit cake.
Food editor Judith Wilson explained the difference between the various cakes in a 1933 article titled “Simple Menus for the Bride: 1
“And right here I think someone should explain the difference between the wedding cake and the bride’s cake. They are not the same. The bride’s cake is a delicate white decorative cake placed on the bride’s table and cut by the bride. The wedding cake is a spicy cake, heavy with fruits. It is baked in a loaf or in individual squares, wrapped in silver foil and packed in small white ribbon-tied boxes and given to guests at the close of the dinner or reception.”
And she even provided her favorite recipe:
Here is a recipe for a fruity wedding cake. Sift cake flour powder, and measure four and one-half cups. Sift again with one teaspoon baking powder, one teaspoon baking powder, one-half teaspoon cloves, one-half teaspoon cinnamon and one-half teaspoon mace. Cream one pound butter thoroughly, and add one pound (2 cups) brown sugar gradually and cream together until light and fluffy. Add ten well beaten eggs, one-half pound of dates, seeded and sliced, one pound of raisins, one ppound of currants, one-half pound of thinly sliced citron, one-half pound candied orange and lemon peel, one cup honey, one cup molasses and one-half cup sweet cider.
Add the sifted dry ingredients gradually. Bake in four pans 8x8x2 inches, lined with greased paper. The oven should be low – 250 degrees Fahrenheit – and the cake should bake for three or three and one-half hours. This recipe makes ten pounds of cake. The cakes are cut into smaller squares and distributed to the guests.
Traditionally squares of wedding fruit cake were taken home by the guests and cherished as mementos. For their part, the newlyweds would keep part of the cake for themselves, and eat a piece on every anniversary.
Yup, you read that right. On every anniversary. It wasn’t unusual for small portions of an original wedding fruit cake to be eaten at 10th or even 25th anniversary celebrations.
Or even longer, as was the case for Mr. and Mrs. H.B. Patten of New Bern, NC. They were married in 1882, and put aside a part of their wedding fruit cake to be enjoyed later. In 1932, the couple celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary, and served each other the last piece of their 50-year-old fruit cake declaring it had “only improved with age”. 2
Even though my grandparents didn’t save pieces of the cakes from their 1933 wedding, I do remember coming across what turned out to be a chunk of Mom’s wedding cake once when I was helping her clean out the big chest freezer we kept in the basement. It was double wrapped in tin foil and wax paper, and the white frosting dropped off when Mom unwrapped it.
I recall She wouldn’t let me taste it, instead Mom just tossed that last bit of her forgotten wedding cake into the garbage bag along with the head of the biggest walleye Dad had ever caught and had always meant to have taxidermied, and kept on cleaning.
So much for traditions!
Your turn and your traditions
Reflect on the oldest wedding story you know in your family. What details stand out, and how has this story been passed down through generations?
What unique wedding traditions or customs does your family follow? How do you feel about these traditions, and do you plan to continue them?
Write about a family wedding that was particularly unusual, funny, or memorable. What made it stand out, and how do people in your family talk about it today?
Choose a family couple whose love story led to marriage. How did they meet, and what led to their wedding day? What lessons or values does their story share about love?
Are there any heirlooms, specific outfits, or symbols that appear in family weddings? What meaning do they hold, and how have they been used or altered over time?
Weddings can bring out the best and the worst in family dynamics. Reflect on a wedding where family relationships played a significant role, whether joyful or challenging.
Think about how wedding traditions in your family have evolved. How have generational or cultural changes influenced what is celebrated and how?
Copyright 2025 Lori Olson White
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Endnotes
1 Judith Wilson, “Simple Menus for the Bride”, Hinton Daily News, Hinton, VA July 3, 1933. P 5.
2 “Wedding Cake 50 Years Old”, The Cleveland American, June 16, 1932, P 7.
The wedding photos say so much! And what a surprise to find the white gown your grandmother wore in her wedding photo. Bride's cake, groom's cake, and a wedding cake distinctions were new to me (although I had known about black wedding gowns as the more traditional color before the Victorian influence). That the wedding cake was a fruit cake I found personally interesting. One year the love of my life Sam hadn't done any Christmas shopping and knew he'd better have something for me to unwrap by morning so he drove to the gas station and bought a Hostess Holiday Fruit Cake. I was pissed. I threw it in the freezer and gave it to him the following Christmas as a gift. The next year he gave it back. We kept up the tradition of exchanging the fruitcake and did not overspend on gifts. Since I refused to do the whole wedding thing, I guess this really was our "wedding cake." Sam surprised me our third Christmas together with an Ashford spinning wheel. We homesteaded in upstate NY and lived much the way our grandparents had - off the grid.