Piroska Hamos' wedding photo

This is a picture of my wedding. It was taken on the 8th December 1929, probably in Budapest. My husband and I were related. We were second cousins; my Husband's grandfather, Jakab Kohn, and my Grandmother on my mother's side Antonia Kohn, were brother and sister, and we met at an afternoon get-together, at my Aunty Linka's place. I wasn't even seventeen and he asked me to go to skating with him. My parents let me go alone, because he was a relative. Imre's younger sister lived at number 29, Wesselenyi Street, with Imre and his Mom, and I was invited there. He liked me. I had never had a boy courting me before. He was 30 and he wanted to get married. He couldn't find anyone suitable. And then he courted me. He asked for my hand in marriage and I had to decide. I had just finished the second year of commercial college, when I was asked; he wanted to get married as soon as possible. He didn't want to wait. I was a really good student and I really loved going to school. Back then, there was no opportunity for a married woman to go to school. I didn't even graduate from this school, because I decided to get married. But it's not good to marry at such a young age. It was a good marriage, but I left many things out of my life. For example, I would have loved to dance, but my husband hated dancing, so this was completely missing from my life. I still think it was wrong, that my parents let a 17 year old girl decide alone. The wedding took place in December 1929. it took place in the synagogue in Dohany Street. We used to live there in the seventh district. At that time we didn't live in Dob Street any more, but at Karoly Avenue number nine. First we went to the registrar's office in the morning and afterwards to the synagogue. I had nice wedding, a big one. I can't say how many people were there, but it was the closest relatives, many of them. From Imre's side, his mother came, all his Aunties, his sisters and their children; there were many people. My class teacher, from the middle school, Gezane Ban, really liked me and she was very unhappy that I got married. She took the whole middle school class along with her. I got many pieces of needlework as wedding presents. We had a big lunch up in our flat. There were at least 20 or 30 people in the flat after our wedding. There were two long tables in the living room, but what the food was, I don't recall. I had a really beautiful dress. It was embroidered silk, mid-blue, long sleeved and the collar and the cuffs were sewed with pearls. The fashion at that time was that the dress was shorter at the front and longer at the back, not all the way down to the floor, but long. My step-mother's brother and his wife had a ladies' clothes salon, but an elegant outfitter's, not an off-the-peg store; so it was an elegant salon and they made it. But we did have to pay for it. There wasn't a real honeymoon, as such. We spent the first night in The Royal Hotel. We left the wedding lunch, and the Royal Hotel had a so-called 'palm garden' at that time, and we met three of my cousins there, who were also Imre's cousins and his best friends. We met there and chatted and spent the night there. Then we came out to Matyasfold, because we had bought the house before, and it was almost completely furnished. We had a big suitcase and it was full of porcelain and glass and my bride's bouquet was in there too. I can't say any more what else it had in it. I went to the wedding in my father's car and we packed everything into this car a few days after the wedding. Karoly Avenue number nine, had a through-courtyard, leading from Karoly Avenue on one side to Rumbach Street on the other side, by the synagogue. The car was standing at the Rumbach Street gate, and the carpet, along with a lot of other things, was put on the roof. We left for Matyasfold. When we got there, the suitcase was gone. We had left it at the gate. Our Dob Street address was written inside the case. Because we, and also my parents, used to travel with this case when we went to Balassagyarmat, so the name and address was in it. But that's not all; the lucky thing was that Dad's younger sister, Aunty Giza had moved into our old flat in Dob Street, and the honest people who found the case, opened it and saw that these must be wedding presents because of the bride's bouquet, and they took it all there. That's how everything that we had thought lost, was recovered.