In the small, southern town of Oxford, Mississippi, two people were married last Saturday night. It is a simple statement, one that in no way reveals the significance and meaning of what really took place on that warm, summer evening under the magnolias in the back garden of an antebellum home on Jefferson Avenue, just off the square.
If you are a southerner and were fortunate enough to be there, you would know immediately that you were at the center of the universe, because weddings among southern families—white or black—are at the center of southern society. They are the glue that bonds not just two young hearts in love, but entire families and fortunes and futures. If you weren’t there last Saturday, and unless you were familiar with southern weddings or unless someone explained them to you—especially this wedding—you would probably never know what took place, who had been there, how simple and beautiful the ceremony was, or why it was such an event to be remembered.
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The Dr. Thomas Isom House, Oxford, Mississippi
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It happened at the Isom House, a historic two-story home built in 1835 and located within eyeshot of the Oxford courthouse only two blocks away. The house is rumored to be the building which William Faulkner used as the model for the house of Emily Grierson in his famous short story “A Rose for Emily”. However, most scholars have discounted the idea because of the lack of evidence and the house's own lack of similarity to the Grierson house in the story.
Yet, the Isom House - surrounded by fragrant magnolias, flowering crepe myrtle, and sprawling, gnarled oak trees almost as old as the house itself - lies less than a half mile from Rowan Oak—Faulkner’s antebellum home on Old Taylor Road—and only three blocks from St. Peter’s Cemetery where Faulkner’s physical remains are buried. Everything about Oxford reeks of Faulkner and books and writers and southern gothic. It hangs in the air suspended like woodsmoke—you cannot help breathe it in or taste in the town’s architecture, its residents, its food or its history. Oxford is the place where southern literature begins and ends.
Southern weddings are glorious things to behold, and this one was even more so. Famous people came, not so famous people came, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, children,
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women in hats and bows and ribbons and silk came, rushing quickly from their cars inside the house to escape the wilting 105 degree heat that had oppressed the town for nearly a week. Among those who were there were many of the staff and employees of Y’all Magazine—the magazine which the groom founded five years ago and which, through spit and sweat and a fair bit of elbow grease, has risen to become a successful national publication.
All of us were there—journalists, authors, writers, copy editors, bureau chiefs, art directors, graphic designers, accountants, production folks, photographers, illustrators, and many more. Famous writers came and met each other for the first time, each an admirer of the next, each humbled and happy to be there and to exchange phone numbers and Christmas card addresses with someone as famous as people say they were themselves.
The single folks arrived, too, conspicuous in their white collars and combed hair and black tuxedos and suits and bow ties hastily arranged beneath adam’s apples, walking stiffly up the front steps, smiling uncertainly at everyone and wondering if there was anybody there they knew and where are they supposed to go next? They wandered around, their eyes searching for the flashes of color and whiffs of perfume that tell them there is a girl nearby who needs to be looked at and looked at good.
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"The procession began…eight bridemaids
glided down the aisle one by one
in ribboned grace like swans
gliding effortlessly across a mirrored lake,
each clutching two fresh pink roses."
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They have done their best to dress for the occasion—seersucker or linen or tuxedo or blazer was the norm, and at the first glimpse of a clutch of girls, the boys instinctively pushed out their chests, adjusted their ties and nervously smoothed their hair in some vague hope of at least getting a smile from one of them. The girls, meanwhile, clustered together like a football huddle and talked in rapid-fire about their corsages, dresses, makeup and nail polish. They did not notice the boys staring at them in gape-mouthed, goggle-eyed wonder.
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The Official Stephen Enzweiler