Legendary Weddings

My wife and I just celebrated our 17-year anniversary. Lots of people have been married for 17 years, but usually it takes them two, three, even four marriages to get there. Stacey and I have done it all in one shot and we are still going.

We pulled out the wedding album. I remember how expensive the book was: $1,200 for pictures. I know they had to use real film back in the olden days, but that was still a huge chunk of change in 1995. Especially for two twenty-year-old kids. Actually, let’s be fair, especially for my in-laws, because there is no way we could have afforded any of our wedding. At that point we could not have paid to elope to Las Vegas, we would have been lucky to pull off being married by a judge with Kentucky Fried Chicken afterwards.

So, we pulled out the super expensive album, which after 17 years has amortized out to not so expensive ($71 a year, bargain!). There are a few things I like about this album, not the least of which is how young we looked. But my wife and I like to go through the book and look at all the people in the backgrounds of the pictures, noting how their lives have changed in the ensuing years. People have died, grown up, there is one girl who was a literal child, teeny tiny, in our album who is now married with children herself; some of the changes are hard to wrap my pea brain around.

We were married in Castro Valley, the chapel at , and we have largely made our lives here in Castro Valley.

This week on CVLegends I asked folks if, where, and when they were married in CV.

Below are some of the responses:

Katie Whitby: At FBC CV a year and a half ago! And the reception was at ! All CV wedding!

Joyce Gruemmer-Bunch: Got married in the on Redwood Road June 1977 and the reception was held at the Blue Dolphin located at the Marina in San Leandro.

Steve Ontiveros: We wed in our CV backyard and partied here into the wee small hours. 09/08/07 at 6:54pm. There is a picture floating around of me showing my new wedding ring finger to a well meaning AC Sheriff.

Sandy Albrecht Thomas: Wedding and reception at the Masonic Center on Crow Canyon. So much time spent in that building through the years.

Elisabeth Hawkins: Civil service in Virginia in 1994 and blessing of the marriage ceremony at in CV a couple of months later. We were the first to use their new hall at the time. My divorce will be official this coming Tuesday. LOL!

Robin R. Peterson Rees: Jim and I were married at (where we are still members) 43 years ago, 1969. The reception was at the fellowship hall at the church on Wisteria. Since then we have lived in Europe and Asia and now are back!

Alison Kling Ordner: June 24, 1995 104 degrees in Castro Valley and we got married at . Our reception was at Club at Oak Knoll. No a/c for the wedding or reception. The wedding was after the last mass of the day and the timer had turned it off. The Club was built in like 1918 and had no a/c. Everyone always remembers how hot it was.

Nora Toloski-Patterson: In 1980 I got married at Carlos Bee Park. Hundreds of people were there, I hardly knew anyone. Cliff Burton played with a band of CV people our wedding song "another one bites the dust" . We got kicked out of the park for being so loud, so Lisa Latter invited us all to her house on Orange Ave, where one of my girlfriends danced on her roof topless. Our marriage lasted 6 weeks. The next year I met my husband Craig at the same house where Lisa was having a Halloween party. We however went to Tahoe and tied the knot and have been happily every after so to speak.. :)

Danielle Gimbel: I wasn’t married in CV, but I had my reception at the Community Center 9/12/2010. I even shot some hoops in my wedding dress after.

The above responses were only a small sampling we received on CVLegends, to see all of the responses, or to add your own, please visit us at www.facebook.com/CVLegends and if you’re married, tell your partner you love them. Thank you.