Dolly Parton is mourning the loss of her husband, Carl Dean, who passed away on March 3. Parton and Dean married on May 10, 1966, after meeting outside a laundromat. Madly in love, the couple unfortunately didn't have a lavish wedding. Invitations were already sent out, when the owner of her record label asked her to postpone her nuptials.
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At the time, Parton was working on what would become her debut Hello, I'm Dolly album, and Fred Foster, who owned Monument Records, advised her to stay single.
"I was engaged. He asked me not to get married," Parton recalls to Local 3. Parton remembers Foster telling her it would be harder to promote her if she was a married woman.
Not having a big ceremony was heartbreaking for Parton, but she remained determined to marry Dean.
"My mother-in-law had already sent out invitations," Dolly says. "It broke her heart because I said we had to call the wedding off."
"We went that next weekend, sneaked out because we didn't want to go anywhere close by, like in Bryson City, North Carolina," Parton recalls. "So we thought Ringgold because we knew that was where you could get your license and get married the same day."
Dolly Parton and Carl Dean's Wedding Ceremony
In order to quickly become Mrs. Dean, Parton was told they needed to go to the courthouse. It was an idea that she quickly brushed aside.
"I said, 'I've got to have Mama there'," Parton recalls. "So I had bought a little dress. Mama had bought me a Bible, some flowers on it. We grabbed Mama and went back, and got married on a Monday, in a church."
"We found a pastor, neither one of us were Baptist," she adds. "My dad's people were, so I'd been to a lot of Baptist churches."
Parton and Dean didn't have a big wedding, but she was able to wear a wedding dress, albeit five decades later. For their 50th wedding anniversary, Parton and Dean went all out, including with the Country Music Hall of Fame member wearing a white gown.
"I missed the big long wedding dress the first time, so this time, we went all out," Partons says (via The Knot). "I wore a Steve Summers dress. Carl looked great in his suit. Then we went down to Ringgold again and spent the night in our camper, went out to the lake for a few days. I finally got to have the wedding that I never got to have."
