I Do

A Cultural History of Montana Weddings by Martha Kohl

Weddings make for great—and sometimes startling—stories: the woman who escaped from her bedroom window to run off with a neighboring rancher; the priest who planned to combine an eighth-grade graduation ceremony with a wedding mass; the couple who courted for years by mail before managing to overcome the vast distance that separated them; the wedding guests who played cards while waiting for the bride’s grandparents to arrive on a delayed train; the mail-order bride who jilted the man who sent for her; the couple who married on the main pavilion of the 1905 Flathead County Fair; the couple who exchanged their vows at a Great Falls gun show.

Through stories like these, I Do tells of weddings as diverse as the couples who have lived and married in Montana: Finnish homesteaders, Chinese restaurateurs, Métis fiddlers, Irish miners, Blackfeet students, and Jewish merchants. But whether the brides and grooms said "I do" in a cathedral or an isolated cabin, in 1860 or one hundred years later, their stories offer a unique—and intimate—view to Montana's past.