Richard L. and Sharon E. Aden Kienlen (Originally published July 2021)

One of the items I found when going through my parents' belongings was a laminated sheet with some newspaper clippings about my mom's engagement and her wedding. The article about her wedding made me laugh. You see, we aren't fancy people. We aren't up on all the latest fashion trends. My mom was from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and her family struggled financially at times. The article which follows would make you think otherwise. I don't know who wrote it, but I can imagine my Granny working on it, trying to get the wording just right. I hope you enjoy our family's moment in the fashion spotlight.

My parents had a wedding album, of course, but all the photos were in black and white. It was hard to imagine the colors my mom chose for her wedding other than the bridesmaid dress - one of those was on a hanger in their basement. I eventually came across a box of slides and found the same photos in color. What a find!

I also found their honeymoon photos. I've been trying to pin down the locations they visited because they weren't marked. That's no easy task, for any of you who have tried to do crazy things like line up your picture of mountains with things you see in a Google image search. I suspected that they stayed at The Driftwood Inn in Vero Beach, Florida but I wasn't sure. In May I went to Florida to visit my daughter, and we decided to meet up in Miami Beach (which is not a place I want to revisit). On the way, I stopped at The Driftwood Inn. It is now on the Historic Register, but it's still there. When I walked into the lobby, I recognized the wood paneling. It was exactly the same as the wood behind my dad in one of my favorite photos of him - looking at a map on his honeymoon! Mystery solved!