Couple marries again… for the first time

When California couple Ann Shulman and Steve Colwell needed a copy of their marriage license for a business transaction recently, they turned to the file cabinet where they kept their important documents–but it wasn’t amid their birth certificates or passports. No matter. Shulman sent off a letter to the state’s Vital Record Office requesting a copy, and expected its arrival in a matter of weeks.

What she received instead came as a shock: a certified copy of the pubic record of marriages in California dating from 1905—with no record of their May 5, 1991 wedding. There appeared to be no such union in Marin County or in the entire sunny state of California.

Which meant… they weren’t legally married? How to tell Colwell’s 93-year-old Catholic mother that they had been living in sin all these years? Or their two sons, James and Daniel, 23 and 21 respectively, that they were illegitimate?

In the end they decided to do the right thing: to get married again, for the first time—thirty years later to the day. This time the nuptials took place in Front Royal, VA, near Browntown, where Shulman’s family has owned a farm for 56 years. The bride wore her original wedding gown with cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat. They planned to honeymoon in Browntown.

Julie Langsdorf
Washington, D.C.

Ann Shulman and Steve Colwell on their first wedding day on May 5, 1991, and below, thirty years later to the day, in Front Royal.