Why I’ll Always Have A Soft Spot For Ivy Vines

It’s not unusual for families to pass meaningful wedding tokens from one generation to the next. For some brides, it’s a dress. For others, it’s a pair of earrings or a necklace. In my family, it’s ivy. 

At her 1959 wedding to my grandfather, my grandmother carried a loose bouquet of lily of the valley and lively stems of the evergreen vine. After the celebration, my great-grandmother propagated the festive cuttings at her Weymouth, Massachusetts, home. When my newlywed grandparents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, shortly thereafter, my grandmother brought the ivy with her, giving the vine its first set of Southern roots. The plant tagged along again when the young couple and their growing brood relocated to Kingstree, the small town about 75 miles from Charleston where my mom grew up.

There, the vine grew and climbed; and 31 years after my grandmother first walked it down the aisle, my mom carried sprigs from the plant at her own wedding.

Unlike some treasured heirlooms, which can be carefully preserved in layers of tissue paper, the family ivy can’t be tucked away in storage or hidden in the back of a jewelry box for a rainy day. My dad may not have known about this part of the deal when he met my mom at the altar, but as he vowed to love her “for better or for worse,” he implicitly took on the job of Ivy Protector too.

It’s a role he’s taken seriously in the 30-plus years since. He planted it in the backyard and by the mailbox at their first house, and when my parents moved into their current home five years later, he brought it along, replanting it in the backyard.

As my sisters and I grew up, the ivy did too, and now it climbs the height of our wooden fence. Every once in a while, my dad will propagate a just-in-case stem of ivy in another pot—his back-up plan should anything happen to the sprawling mother vine. For a long time, despite his busy work schedule, he refused to hire yard help for precisely this reason: “What if they kill the ivy?” 

In November 2022, my sister got married, and I followed in June 2023. There was one element we both knew we couldn’t celebrate without: Our grandmother’s ivy. 

Before each of our wedding weekends, our wonderful florist came to my parents’ house and clipped pieces off the vine, which were then tucked into the bouquets that we carried down the aisle. And once again, after the festivities, my dad brought home the stems to propagate yet another generation of the plant. 

I’m not much for superstition, but I think there’s a little magic in that vine. My grandparents were married for nearly 50 years before my grandmother passed away, and my parents just celebrated 33 years of marriage this past November. I’m sure they’d tell me it’s patience, humor, and compassion that’ve gotten them this far—but I think it has a little something to do with the ivy too.