Blondie Marries Dagwood
There have been many weddings both historical and fictional in the world of pop culture. We can go back two thousand years to a wedding that Jesus attended in Cana where he turned the water into wine. We don’t know who the bride and groom were at that wedding, but we certainly know it took place. Fast forward a few hundred years and we celebrate Arthur marrying his beloved Guinevere; move forward again, and we have Victoria marrying Albert, a wedding that still effects our culture today. The first wedding that we all knew about the day it happened occurred on February 17, 1933, the wedding of Blondie to Dagwood.
Blondie is a comic strip character created by Chic Young in 1930. Originally Blondie was a flapper with a lot of boyfriends, some of which were well-to-do. One of her beaus was Dagwood Bumstead, son of a billionaire railroad tycoon.
Dagwood was a bit dense, going so far as to get lost in his own mansion in one strip. The problem was that this was the 1930s, and the depression was full-on. The adventures of a beautiful blonde and her goofy rich boyfriend were not something that the public was finding funny anymore. The Blondie strip was losing readers, and Chic Young had to do something.
Then inspiration hit. Blondie and Dagwood fell in love. This was a first in comic strips. There was an engagement, and then the first wedding in comic strip history took place on February 17, 1933.
Dagwood’s father immediately cut him off and disinherited him, leaving Dagwood and Blondie as working-class members. Blondie’s marriage to Dagwood has lasted over 80 years. And is still going strong. Because of the marriage, the tone of the strip was changed from a singles woman’s adventures to the adventures of a family. The Bumsteads would have two children. The first was a son, Baby Dumpling, a precocious child who in his teens, would have his name revealed as Alexander. The second is a daughter named Cookie, who now is a sweet, bubbly teenage girl, probably much like her mother may have been.
After the marriage of Dagwood to Blondie, the world of Pop Culture weddings exploded. L’il Abner would marry Daisy May. Clark Kent would marry Lois Lane, and Peter Parker would marry Mary Jane Watson.
As the public grew more aware TV characters would get married and the marriages of important people would take hold of the public’s imagination. This would go back to the wedding of Prince Charles to Diana and the wedding of their son, Prince Harry to Meghan Markle.