I married Alexander Hamilton on December 14, 1780, in my parents’ parlor, the same room where we’d first met three years before.
Unlike the modern taste for lavish weddings, ours was a simple ceremony at noon in our Dutch Reformed faith, without music, ostentation, or pretense. Alexander and I stood before our church’s minister and exchanged our vows, with a crowd of my family in attendance as our witnesses. While it saddened me that Alexander had Mac McHenry as his only guest, I cheered myself to think how he could now count upon my family, with all my dozens of cousins, aunts, and uncles as his, too.
This parlor was always a cheerful place, with tall windows on two sides that always drew the sunlight. Because snow blanketed the lawns around the house, the reflected sun was especially bright, as if blessing our union with its brilliance.
After much deliberation, Alexander decided to wear his uniform in all its noble simplicity, and in honor of our shared sympathies for liberty. In his pocket he carried the wedding handkerchief I’d worked as a gift for him, the finest Irish linen with a pattern of pulled threads, and a gift that he treasured always as a memento of the day.
As the bride I was entitled to two shifts of wedding attire. For the ceremony and the wedding breakfast that followed, I wore an elegant Polonaise gown of white satin, trimmed with silver ribbons and edged with bands of dark fur, it being winter. I’d pink stockings with bright green satin shoes on my feet, and a pleated cap of such fine linen that it was no more than a hazy crown upon my dark hair, which I’d left unpowdered for the morning. Over my shoulders was a sheer linen kerchief that I’d embroidered myself for the occasion with a pattern of wreathes and swags, and in my pocket for luck was a handkerchief edged in fine Italian lace, a gift from Mamma. As ornament, I also wore a strand of coral beads given me as an infant by my grandparents, and in my ears were gold and coral earrings from Angelica and Mr. Carter.
But my most treasured jewel was the one I would wear forever, the gold wedding ring that Alexander slipped upon my finger to make me his wife: a cleverly devised gimmel ring of two thinly wrought bands, one engraved with his name and one with mine. Together the bands twisted and fit snugly against each other into a single, shining gold band, without beginning or end. To this day, I have not taken it from my finger since Alexander placed it there, nor will I ever do so, not in this life.
As the day stretched into evening, more guests appeared at our house for a larger celebration, with dancing in our center hall and a late supper with bottles of Madeira that had been smuggled through the British blockades. I changed into a deep blue satin gown, trimmed with painted bouquets of flowers and ribbons, and powdered my hair as white as the drifts outside.
Our stable yard was filled with the sleighs of those who’d come a distance to attend. Our guests included every prominent Dutch family in New York, plus others of distinction in the state who offered us their best wishes.
Flushed and fortified with Papa’s Madeira, Mac McHenry stood on the landing of the stairs to make a grand toast, classically inspired, in honor of Alexander and me. This toast included a long poem whose bawdy passages made my older aunts blush, and me, too, as was likely intended, although Alexander declared it worthy of a true laureate. Either way, it was one more thing that made our wedding unlike any other. Despite the rigors of her pregnancy, Mamma had been determined that our wedding would be Albany’s most notable of the Christmas season, and there was no doubt she’d succeeded. I heard the revelry lasted so far into the night that it was morning before the last guests left.
I say I heard, not having witnessed it myself. Around ten o’clock, Alexander and I withdrew from the celebrations. I’d begged my parents for us to be spared the traditional wedding night humiliations, wherein the bride and groom were taken upstairs, undressed, and put to bed by their drunken friends with every kind of lewd jest imaginable. Perhaps Mamma pitied me, or perhaps she pitied Alexander with only a single friend to escort him, but she finally agreed and made certain that Papa relented as well.
Instead we slipped away on our own and hurried upstairs before anyone could take notice. It had been a long, long day, filled with excitement and many emotions. I’d so anticipated the moment when Alexander and I would first be alone as husband and wife, but when at last we were standing in the bedchamber, I felt suddenly shy.
“You’re quiet, Mrs. Hamilton,” he said, his smile crooked, and I wondered if he, too, were feeling the weighty significance of his moment.
I smiled, and blushed. “Mrs. Hamilton,” I repeated. “How fine that sounds!”
“It does indeed,” he said. “I am honored to present to you my wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton.”
I curtseyed to continue the game. “My husband, Colonel Hamilton.”
He took my hand to lift me up, and held it, beginning to draw me gently closer. “You cannot know how happy I am tonight with you as my wife.”
Yet I hung back. “I hope I’ll always make you that happy,” I said, my heart racing as I thought of how much more worldly and experienced he was than I. I didn’t know why I felt so skittish. This was Alexander, the man I’d chosen for the rest of our lives. “I love you so much.”
“And I love you, too, Betsey,” he said, his gaze slipping lower over my body.
Self-consciously I thought of how my elegant wedding attire had suffered from the crush at the supper and from dancing. My kerchief was crumpled and flat, my dress spotted with spilled wine, and everything was dusted with the powder that scattered from my disheveled hair.
“I should call Rose to undress me,” I said, but before I could, he placed his fingers over my lips.
“Shhhh,” he said softly. “You don’t need your maidservant. We don’t need anyone else now but each other. I’ll help you undress.”
I smiled in spite of myself, picturing my stalwart solider husband as a dainty lady’s maid. “You needn’t do that.”
“But I want to,” he said. “I’m your husband now, and I want to do everything for you.”
“I don’t know why I’m being so foolish,” I said, tears stinging my eyes.
“You’re not foolish,” he said. “You’re perfection. Love me as I love you, Betsey. Trust me, and our joy will be boundless.”
I nodded, for I already loved him beyond measure, and trusted him with my happiness and everything else. I took a deep breath and kissed him, and loved, and trusted.
And indeed, as he’d promised, that night our joy was boundless.