Some Are Choosing Country Western MotifsWhen a young man and woman are married, their thoughts usually are focused on their future. But when Janis Marie Menk and Glenn Douglas Hetrick were wed eight days ago, they also paid homage to the past. The couple were married on a farm in Pine in a true country western wedding style. The farm was purchased in 1867 by Hetrick's great-great-great grandfather, Andrew English Sr. Adjacent property has been in the family's hands since 1840. Judith A. Oliver, a historian from Marshall, says the historic farm is for sale and soon may be owned by someone outside the family for the first time in more than a century.
When Janis Marie Menk and Glenn Douglas Hetrick were married Aug. 12 in Pine, it wasn't hard for the bride to decide what old item would be part of her wedding ensemble to fulfill the requirements of that traditional maxim of country western wedding. Many aspects of the marriage ceremony replicated events that could have occurred in the 19th century. The bride and groom rode down a country lane in a horse-drawn carriage to the homestead of Hetrick's great-great grandfather Andrew English Jr. at 130 English Road, where family and friends had gathered to witness the ceremony. Dressed in a floor-length, ivory satin gown, Menk walked to the flower-decked porch of her husband-to-be's ancestral farmhouse, where the Rev. John Clunas of the First Baptist Church of New Kensington greeted the assembly. There, the young couple exchanged their vows. Why would a 32-year-old pilot living in Texas want to be married at a weathered Pennsylvania farmhouse probably more than 130 years old? Hetrick said it was because ''our family farm is steeped in tradition.'' ''That's where all the events used to take place in early America, for instance, births, reunions, funerals, and everything in between. So why not a wedding?'' Many other nostalgic touches highlighted the afternoon's festivities. The reception was held under a large tent set up approximately where the English's old bank barn formerly stood. Hetrick toasted his grandmother, 84-year-old Caroline M. English, who came to the farm as a bride in 1933. She still owns the 15-acre property, but lives in the Passavant Retirement Community in Zelienople. The bridegroom's parents, Carol and Douglas Hetrick, presented their son and daughter-in-law with a unique wedding gift: Glenn Hetrick's great-great grandparent's marriage certificate. The ornate document verified that Andrew English Jr. and Anna C. Goehring were ''joined together in Holy Matrimony'' Oct. 30, 1862, more than a century before the bridegroom was born. |