Contact sheet 58 is of Craig Murrin and Diana Powell’s wedding, held in Allee Chapel on the Cornell College campus.  Probably June 1976.

Some of the photographs are of everyone waiting around for the wedding to commence.  The bride was an hour late.  She wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to go through with it.  Her maid of honor, a sweet young woman named Christi (I think) helped her with the decision.

Diana was a Cornell College graduate who returned for a year to work as an admissions counselor.  She met up with Craig his senior year.  She was protective of Craig and suspicious of the many photographs I took of him.  She cautioned him that when he became famous I might try to blackmail him or sell off photographs to news sources.  

Diana’s father officiated the wedding.  He changed outfits for the reception at the commons, into his Army officer’s uniform.

Craig had an old high school friend as his best man.  The friend had an incredibly large motorcycle.  It displaced 800 ccs, which was a monster in 1976.  I remember dining with him and his girlfriend later, in Iowa City or Mount Vernon.  I forget which.  She was a Native American phys ed graduate student and one of the prettiest women I’d yet seen.

There’s not much to be said about the wedding.  The groomsmen prepared in the college yearbook office.  We waited.  The ceremony was brief and conclusive.  So was the reception.  I got to hang out with Craig, Dave Babcock, and Chris Dewey just as we had as dorm mates on the second floor of Altoona Hall.

Craig and Diana moved out to the Bay area, where Craig began law school at Stanford and Diana went to Boalt Hall.  

Diana graciously hosted Janet and me a few summers later.  Their marriage lasted a year after that.

Few weddings that I photographed had marriages that have endured.

The photographs referenced in this essay can be found in the section Photographs by Number in gallery 00058.