Top on most brides’ to-do list: find a location and set a date.
In the spring of 1935, newly engaged Dorothy Grant couldn’t cross off those two items. She wanted to get married that summer in a traditional church, but her home congregation, Calvary Lutheran, had yet to construct a building of its own. The congregation, formed by the six to eight Protestant families living in the predominantly Catholic southwest Edina, held services in one-room Cahill School.
This was the very school her younger sisters attended, and Dorothy could not imagine her wedding taking place among the rows of desks, a pot-bellied stove and a chalkboard as a backdrop.
“I remember saying, ‘But I can’t get married in a schoolhouse,’” she recalls in an essay written shortly after her 50th wedding anniversary.
Dorothy did not take into account the talents of the Ladies’ Aid, who were determined to make their church’s first wedding something to remember.
“Mrs. Arthur (Elizabeth) Peterson promised faithfully that no one would recognize that this building was a schoolhouse and not a chapel. Knowing her to be a very capable person, we commenced (planning,)” Dorothy wrote. “The wedding was on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the 25th of August 1935, and true to their word, the women in the Ladies’ Aid did transform that unattractive school room into a beautiful garden.”
And so began Dorothy Grant’s long marriage to Leonard Palmer—and a new career for Elizabeth Peterson, who ran a successful wedding catering business for many years.
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Historic Cahill School, now located at Tupa Park at Eden Avenue and Highway 100, hosts living history field trip programs and history-themed events—but no weddings. Visit the Edina Historical Society's website for more info.
