Montgomery was already 36 years old by the time she married Ewan Macdonald, a Presbyterian minister who waited for her through a five-year engagement as she cared for her ailing grandmother.

On July 5, 1911, Montgomery officially added to her persona the title of “wife” as well as “author”.  She describes the details of the day, along with her sadness over her mother, Clara “Tillie” Woolner Macneill, not being with her.

“The morning of July 5th was cool and gray, threatening rain.  But it did not rain and in the evening it cleared up beautifully….As I stood dressed in my room and heard the guests arriving I thought sadly of one guest who should have been there—whom I had always dreamed of having with me when I was married—who would have been so glad to be there but who, instead of helping to robe me for my bridal, was sleeping in Cavendish graveyard, her once so-busy, helpful hands folded on her breast.  Poor Tillie!  If she could only have been at my wedding.

I wore my white dress and veil and Ewan’s present—a necklace of amethysts and pearls.  My bouquet was of white roses and lilies of the valley.  At twelve, Uncle John took me down, while Stella and the Howatts sane ‘The Voice that Breathed o’er Eden.’  In a few minutes the ceremony was over and they were calling me ‘Mrs. Macdonald’—something I haven’t quite got used to even yet, by the way.  It always gives me an odd feeling to be called ‘Mrs. Macdonald’.  I have to remind myself mentally that it is I that is being spoken to.  Somehow, I felt sorry at giving up my old name—the name of my father, the name linked with the experiences of a lifetime, the name under which I have won my success.  To be sure, I shall always keep it in literature.  But there will be a difference….”

A future post about the details of Montgomery’s honeymoon in Scotland will be coming soon.  To read more about her wedding and see pictures of her “wedding trousseau dresses”, take a look at The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921.