Ed Grisamore: Americus woman's collection of whimsical wedding stories takes the cake

AMERICUS --

Some women collect china patterns. Others are passionate about hunting for sea shells or shopping for vintage jewelry.

Jane Sullivan has a collection of funny wedding stories. She has stockpiled them for the past 35 years -- tales of matrimonial mayhem and for-better-for-worse verse.

Friends and family know it is her hobby, so they mail them to her. She keeps a large folder of faded newspaper clippings, postmarked from across the miles, stories that went "viral" the old-fashioned way.

They have been cut from the society pages of small-town newspapers in Georgia and Alabama and written up from under the bright lights of Dallas and Palm Springs.

There are wacky accounts of couples being married at drive-in theaters and in the aisles at Wal-Mart. They have tied the knot in cow pastures and backyards next to the trampoline. There is an article about a wedding with 18 Rolls Royces parked in front of the church, and another in which the bride and groom left the reception on a tractor -- after the bride changed into her "going away" overalls.

Romance novelists could have plucked them, like fables, from their imaginations. But, no, you can't make this stuff up.

Like the couple who married on Halloween night at a Citgo station.

The bride was dressed as a witch, and the groom crawled into a coffin. (The wedding vows "till death us do part'' had presumably been broken.)

Whenever she needs a good chuckle, Jane will pull out stories like the one from Hancock County, where a dear couple was married in a deer stand on Valentine's Day. The bride wore camouflage and climbed a ladder to the altar in the tree.

If laughter is the best medicine, this is her giant pill box.

She has her sister, Bitsy, to bless or blame for this. Back in the early 1980s, Bitsy sent Jane a detailed write-up of a wedding in Brewton, Alabama. The bride apparently wrote the long story herself and submitted it to her hometown newspaper. "I loved the wording of it,'' Jane said. "It took up an entire page. She didn't leave out anything. After that, I starting looking for other humorous wedding stories. People knew I liked them and sent them to me.''

There is always room for one more in the drawer, both the sacred and the silly. There was a wedding with more than 100 attendants, and another featured a medieval theme, with a bridesmaid dressed as a barbarian.

The couple who married at Wal-Mart met while working together in layaway. The bride walked down the aisle -- of the shoe department -- and waltzed over to menswear. The vows went smoothly until she realized she had left the groom's ring in the fitting room.

But that's not the only retail tale. Jane filed away a story from The Telegraph a few years back when a couple married on the steps next to the old Sears store at Macon Mall.

The clever headline referred to the young lady as a "Mall Order Bride.''

Jane's husband, Matt, died last year. This March 31 would have marked their 60th wedding anniversary. Her oldest son, Blake Sullivan, lives in Macon.

Her story collection isn't entirely suited for the funny pages. She has an account of her grandparents' wedding in Fort Payne, Alabama, in 1895. She has a copy of the letter her other grandfather wrote in 1890, asking Jane's great-grandparents for their daughter's hand in marriage.

Jane has attended only a few of the weddings in the stories that make her smile, so she has never met most of the characters.

That doesn't stop her from sharing them.

"I've hosted some parties for brides and gotten them out and read them,'' she said, laughing.

Among her favorites is an engagement announcement for two dogs.

The bride-to-be was named "Gracie,'' who graduated magna cum laude from obedience school. Her future plans were to be a stay-at-home mom.

Her fiancé, "Barney," got his degree in home protection and worked in security, specializing in "possum, squirrel and cat control.''

A summer wedding was planned.

I trust they had a long and happy marriage, even in dog years.

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism and creative writing at Stratford Academy in Macon. He can be reached at edgrisamore@gmail.com.

This story was originally published January 23, 2016 at 9:33 PM with the headline "Ed Grisamore: Americus woman's collection of whimsical wedding stories takes the cake ."