Did you ever hear the term “shotgun wedding”.
I still laugh when I think about the days when a couple would end up in a “situation” and he vision of the dad standing there with a shotgun in his hand in case the groom tried to escape.
As silly as it sounds, this did happen back in the day. My wedding was not that type of wedding but it did happen very quickly. You see, I married my husband just before he was set to deploy for a year to the war zone. We had been planning a wedding for a year out, but when he got orders, we decided not to wait any longer. The only thing I had was a dress, and even that hadn’t been altered yet. We called around for a place to hold the reception only to find that they were all booked. It was mid summer so I at least wanted a place with air conditioning. There were places that rented out barns, tents, and picnic areas but I knew that they would be very uncomfortable for both the wedding party and the guests. In desperation, I started calling everything from schools to churches trying to find somewhere that had an HVAC system that worked. I finally found a fire hall one town over that not only had a room big enough to hold everyone but it was air conditioned. This was not my ideal setting for my reception but at that point we didn’t have time to be picky. We decorated it as best we could and the day turned out perfect. The main thing was, I was now married to my best friend, even I had to say goodbye to him for the next year.