Coal Tar Catastrophe
& Other Ways
to Start a Marriage
A Coal-Tar Catastrophe & Other Ways to Start a Marriage
Janet Greene’s wedding day didn’t just flirt with disaster, it took it squarely by the hand and danced it around the room. December 28, 1957, started innocently enough. There was a dress, a groom, and a plan. (Always dangerous.) Janet had a stunning candlelight peau de soie gown, a borrowed beauty from her cousin, altered to perfection and scheduled to arrive on the morning of her big day.
Meanwhile, her shoe heel had snapped off the night before. No problem. Daddy would dash to the shoemaker while she floated through a bridesmaids’ luncheon. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
Enter: a delivery truck, a sudden stop, and an open can of coal tar.
Spoiler Alert:
coal tar
and wedding dresses
do not mix.
When the call came that her dress was “beyond salvation,” Janet, ever composed, tore down the stairs yelling, “Daddy, I don’t have a dress!” Her poor father, halfway through a shoe-repair errand, pivoted to wedding-rescue mode.
While Janet sat at the beauty shop with curlers in her hair and a rising sense of doom, her father and Gene Ely (the wedding coordinator) staged a full-scale bridal emergency. The coal-tar-soaked dress was beyond help.
They needed a miracle.
They found it at Mrs. Tefft’s in Coral Gables. A new dress by the same designer, same candlelight silk, waiting like a fairy tale on a rack. Janet tried it on, declared it beautiful, and her father signed a check faster than you can say “coal tar.”
Seamstresses stitched furiously. Rain poured outside. Somewhere, a shoemaker finished fixing a heel.
By seven o’clock that night, Janet stood in her living room wearing a merry widow bra and hoop skirt, waiting for her gown to arrive. It slid in just under the wire, like all the best happy endings.
Later, that second wedding dress became something of a legend: six different brides wore it over the years. Meanwhile, Janet’s father dined out on the coal tar story at every cocktail party from Miami to the Bahamas.
And Mary, the family maid, slept through the reception in a chair, baseball bat in hand, guarding wedding gifts after the security guard failed to show up.
In the end, nothing, not rain, not ruined dresses, not broken heels, could touch the joy of that day.
Because the best wedding stories, like the best marriages, are stitched together with a little laughter, a lot of love, and just enough chaos to keep things interesting.
