Billie Holiday and flowers

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. 

Holiday is the recipient of four Grammy awards, all of them posthumous awards for Best Historical Album. Furthermore, Holiday herself was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973. Lady Sings the Blues, a film centered on Holiday's life, starring Diana Ross, was released in 1972.Source: Wikipedia

Sepia Saturday posted a great picture of Billie Holiday in front of a mirror with her dog, wearing flowers in her hair. There's even a pineapple on her dressing room table.  But what do I have to share that might meet any of these great possibilities?  I'll go with flowers.



My mother, Mataley Munhall, holding flowers as a bridesmaid.  She lived in San Antonio, Texas, and it was the 30's.  I don't have any idea if she liked jazz, or Billie Holiday.

The newspaper clipping has no date, but it was before my mother and father married in 1936.

To quote the part about my mother:
"Miss Matalay (sic) Munhall, only attendant of the bride, wore a gown of pink taffeta and carried an arm bouquet of white giant white chrysanthemums."

Incidentally, that bouquet pictured in the paper doesn't look like giant white chrysanthemums to me.  But I can't tell exactly what the flowers are.

This had been an evening wedding at home, with the bride in a blue taffeta gown.  The decorations were "an improvised altar at one end of the drawing room...decorated with giant white chrysanthemums and  white cathedral tapers."  I think the reporter probably got confused with the decorations and my mother's bouquet as to which flowers were which.  There certainly is enough flowery language in the clipping.

My parent's wedding was in a church on November 21, 1936. The second clipping (right) was about their having received their marriage license on Friday the 13th, thus the heading "Dare Lady Luck."

The wedding picture of my mother just before the ceremony, says the church was decorated with "potted palms and tall floral baskets filled with white chrysanthemums and white gladioli."

Mataley Munhall (correct spelling) wore a corsage of tea roses on her wine wool "tailleur" trimmed with a wide collar of fitch fur."  She wore her wedding suit when leaving for a "motor trip to the coast."  I have to wonder where they went from San Antonio, TX, but I think Corpus Christi is likely.

Today's Quote:

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable. Joseph Addison