At 75, I Got Married – and Danced Down the Aisle

Carol and I got married on July 18, 2026.

Why get married at this point in our lives? Our combined age is 144 years—or 1,008 dog years.

I was getting tired of being introduced as “Grammy’s boyfriend.”

I felt pretty good for 75 and reasonably confident I could live long enough to make the last payment on a 72-month truck loan.

We had both been down the aisle before, and who knows how many dog years we have left? So if we were going to do this, we weren’t interested in having a traditional wedding. We wanted something unique, reasonably inexpensive and, most importantly, fun.

Our goal was simple: Make it the best damn wedding most of our guests had ever attended.

Based on what they told us afterward, I think we came pretty close.

Forget the Fancy Ballroom

We rented our residential community hall for $500. No fancy hotel, no country club, no ballroom. 

A friend created the decorations using artificial flowers, glass vases, peacock feathers, blue lights and a glitter backdrop.  It was beautiful and we didn’t need a second mortgage.

There were 12 round tables arranged on both sides of a wide center aisle. 

Your seat for the ceremony was also your seat for dinner and the reception, so there was no ceremony in one room followed by 90 people wandering around trying to figure out where they were supposed to go next. Your silverware, napkin and water were already waiting for you.

We didn’t have a head table either. I’ve never understood why the wedding party has to sit in a straight line facing everyone like they’re about to conduct a City Council meeting, while their spouses are stuck in the back with the bride’s second cousin and his third-grade teacher.

Instead, Carol and I had a small table right in the middle of the room, surrounded by everybody. We didn’t use it much. I think we managed about three bites of food before we started making the rounds and talking to people. After dinner, our little table disappeared and we were right in the middle of the party.

Exactly where we wanted to be.

Some other traditions didn’t make the cut. There was no garter toss. At 75, I wasn’t completely confident I’d be able to get back up.

There was no bouquet toss either. Carol’s bouquet was artificial, and we doubted anyone wanted to catch it badly enough to risk a concussion. 

Besides, our guests ranged in age from about two to 80, with the average somewhere in the 50s. 

There weren’t that many single people, and most of the ones who were single apparently had enough sense not to try this again.

Unlike us.

We didn’t spend a fortune on decorations, but there were three places where we decided not to go cheap: food, photography and entertainment.

We hired a good caterer and served a quality buffet. People will eventually forget whether the bride’s bouquet matched the tablecloth. They will remember lousy food.

The same goes for photography. I don’t care how many times Uncle Marvin tells you he just bought a used iPhone 12 and will take your wedding pictures as his gift.

Don’t do it.

We hired professionals for both photography and video, and I’m glad we did. We also took pictures of every possible family combination. Some of these people hadn’t been together in years, and now they have family portraits that may never have happened otherwise.

But the thing that probably made the biggest difference wasn’t the food or the photographs.

It was the production.

At 75, You Don’t Walk Down the Aisle

You dance.

We spent months figuring out how we wanted the ceremony to feel and listened to more than 100 songs.

When it was time for the wedding to begin, I wasn’t standing nervously at the front waiting for Carol. I entered wearing coat tails, a top hat and carrying a cane.

Then Stevie Wonder started singing “For Once in My Life.”

And I danced down the aisle.

No rehearsal. No choreography. Just go.

The wedding party followed behind me, and I think that’s when most of our guests realized this wasn’t going to be a normal wedding.

Then Carol entered. She looked absolutely gorgeous in a dress that matched her peacock theme, but there was no Here Comes the Bride. Instead, Etta James started singing “At Last.”

After 1,008 combined dog years, it seemed appropriate.

We exchanged our individual vows, but we had one more vow to make together. Most couples wait until the reception for their first dance.

We didn’t.

Kenny Chesney’s “Me and You” started playing, and right there during the ceremony, Carol and I danced and sang the song to each other as our joint wedding vow.

That was the moment I’ll never forget.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

Including mine.

Then, after we were pronounced husband and wife, Natalie Cole’s “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)” started blasting. There was no solemn procession and no carefully measured steps.

We danced.

And everybody was already smiling before the reception even started.

Then We Had a Party

I’m convinced a great DJ can make a wedding, and a bad one can turn it into four hours of people checking their watches.

We got lucky. Ours knocked it out of the park, but it wasn’t luck alone. We met with him beforehand and explained exactly what we wanted. 

This wasn’t simply, “Play some wedding music.” We told him the atmosphere we wanted, the genres we liked and the music we didn’t want.

Our reception was probably 80% great dance-and-sing-along music from the ’70s and ’80s. People knew the songs. They sang, danced, laughed and, most importantly, stayed.

That’s what we wanted.

We spent six months planning the wedding, not because we wanted it to be perfect, but because we wanted it to be ours. We skipped traditions we didn’t care about, kept the ones we liked and invented a few of our own

If you’re crazy enough to get married when you and your bride have a combined age of 1,008 dog years, you might as well have go non-traditional and all have a great time