Lucy Ball’s Very Eventful Wedding

It was a wild and wooly evening when Lucy Ball, oldest daughter of Frank C. and Elizabeth Brady Ball, married Alvin Owsley on May 16, 1925. The wedding was held at the home of the bride’s parents, just as her sister Margaret’s wedding was the previous year. The setting was lovely, the guests were many, and the bride and groom had their nerves under control. The weather, however, did not cooperate.

Frances Ball described the wedding to her daughter, Elisabeth, who was not able to attend. According to Frances, “I suppose there has never been a wedding in Muncie or anywhere else for that matter for which such elaborate preparations were made and then at 5:30 in the evening (the wedding was at 7 P.M.) a small tornado burst through Muncie putting out all the electric lights and telephones.” Lucy had said that she wanted a candlelight wedding, and she got it. Frances wrote, “As soon as we realized that the lights would not come on we tore around and gathered up all the candle sticks we had and took them and all my boxes of candles up and stuck them around the big room where the ceremony took place. Some of the guests standing along the ribbon lines held candles while the wedding party walked by….”

What Frances didn’t say was that the bride’s father decided that the house was still a little dark. He commandeered some of the young guests to push two automobiles up the front steps onto the porch so that the headlights could shine into the room where the wedding was held. The wedding and reception went on without another hitch. Frances wrote, “By the time the supper was served, they had fixed spotlights on storage batteries and some kind of gasoline lamps so it was fairly light.”

More than 900 people were invited to “one of the leading events of the social season in the Midwest….” Not everyone attended, of course, but those who did had a great story to tell.