Elvis
Elvis & Priscilla’s Wedding Day – May 1, 1967
Unforgettable day for so many fans around the world and certainly for Elvis & Priscilla
Priscilla and Elvis met in November 1959 at a party at Elvis’ off-base residence in Bad Nauheim in Germany. She was 14 1/2 years old. Priscilla moved to Graceland in early 1963. Elvis formally proposed marriage to Priscilla in December 1966 and gave her an engagement ring with a three-and-a-half-carat diamond that was surrounded by a detachable row of smaller diamonds.
According to a Las Vegas SUN news report about their wedding, “Presley wore a black brocade silk tuxedo and Western boots, while Priscilla wore a floor-length wedding gown of her own design: white silk chiffon, with beaded yoke, trimmed in seed pearls and topped with a three-foot tulle veil secured by a rhinestone crown.”
In late 1971, problems in the marriage of Priscilla and Elvis escalated. On February 23, 1972 they separated. Their separation was formalized in July 1972.
Their divorce was granted on October 9, 1973 at the Los Angeles Superior Courthouse in Santa Monica, California.
Elvis about their divorce: “Our divorce came about not because of another man or another woman but because of the circumstances involving my career. I was traveling too much. I was gone too much.”
Source: Peter Guralnick, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, page 541.
Quotes About Priscilla and Elvis Presley’s Marriage:
Elvis about Priscilla: “You can love someone and be wrong for them.”
Source: Pamela Clarke Keogh, Elvis Presley: The Man, The Life, The Legend, page 238.
Priscilla about submission in marriage: “It’s something she’ll be telling largely female audiences in her lectures: ‘Honey, have your own thing going, too.’ She learned the hard way that total submission in marriage — by either party — is a bad idea.”
Source: Gerri Hirshey. “Priscilla Presley: Her Side of the Story.” Ladies’ Home Journal. 7/2003.
Priscilla looking back at her marriage: “She says she got to write very little of it, and that she doesn’t regret the days in her gilded cage as Mrs. Presley. But she understands now what made it so unworkable in the end: ‘I lived somebody else’s life. It was never about me, it was really about him on every level.'”
Source: Gerri Hirshey. “Priscilla Presley: Her Side of the Story.” Ladies’ Home Journal. 7/2003.
Priscilla: “I lived a really wonderful life with this man and even after our divorce, it was incredible. We had a closer bond, probably because the effort was off and there was just a purity. We realized that we liked each other, and that’s very special.”
Source: Gerri Hirshey. “Priscilla Presley: Her Side of the Story.” Ladies’ Home Journal. 7/2003.
Gerri Hirshey: “This is what Priscilla Presley would like the dreary Elvis mythologizers to understand: Act One was no grand American tragedy. Sure, she was devastated by her husband’s sad demise, his infidelities, her own retaliative affair, the divorce. But the couple remained close, and she totally relied on him until his death when, as she puts it, “the sun went out.”
Source: Gerri Hirshey. “Priscilla Presley: Her Side of the Story.” Ladies’ Home Journal. 7/2003.