The Yale Expositor (Yale, St Clair County, MI), August 21, 1896

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If you think modern wedding dramas are intense, a resurfaced newspaper article from 1896 proves that the viral wedding stories of the past were just as wild. Originally published in a Michigan newspaper over a century ago, this forgotten gem tells the hilarious and bizarre tale of a Kentucky family with a serious penchant for running away.

According to the 1896 report, a 19-year-old girl from Henry County, Kentucky, recently made the trek to Jeffersonville, Indiana, to elope. While a teenage elopement in the late 19th century wasn't exactly front-page news on its own, the bride’s family history certainly was. She was the youngest daughter in a massive family of twenty-one children. Astonishingly, all ten of her older sisters had also eloped to the exact same Indiana town over the previous three years. Even more remarkably, every single one of those ten sisters was married by the exact same local magistrate.

When it came time for the youngest daughter to tie the knot, she apparently decided it was a family tradition she simply couldn't break. The 19-year-old told officials that she had heard so many glowing reviews about this specific Jeffersonville squire from her sisters that she flat-out refused to let anyone else officiate her wedding.

She was so determined to have this specific magistrate perform the ceremony that she went through with the elopement against her parents’ strict wishes—and, hilariously, despite the active protests of her own groom.

Once the "I dos" were finally exchanged, the enthusiastic new bride immediately threw her arms around the magistrate in a celebratory embrace. While a sudden hug from a runaway bride might have breached 19th-century professional etiquette, the original article wryly noted that the squire had no right to be upset. After all, thanks to this one prolific Henry County family, the magistrate had successfully collected the officiating fees for ten different couples.