All kinds of people are getting married in our family.

Two nephews and a niece were married in 2005, two more weddings are planned for this year, and several more couples are likely to become engaged soon.

When my husband and I were married 30 years ago, we had a professional photographer to chronicle the occasion.

My nephews' and niece's weddings included a photographer, but they also made video and audio recordings of the ceremony and reception, and disposable cameras were placed on the tables so that guests could take candid shots throughout the day.

The recordings and photographs were then placed on CDs, the Web, and in photo albums — a kind of permanent record for family and friends to enjoy and pass on through the generations.

Documenting a special event fosters the idea that even though the occasion is rooted in the present, it will echo through the years, touching the lives of those to come. Maybe someday a distant relative will better understand how we lived our lives.

Because I had a great-great-great-grandmother who took the time to write about her life in the mid-1800s, I have a keener understanding of how my ancestors lived their lives, celebrated birth and marriage, and mourned their dead.

Her writings, published in 1987 in "Liwwät Böke, 1807-1882, Pioneer," provide a personal connection to daily life more than 150 years ago.

From her writings, I know that Grandma Boeke (from the German Böke) traveled by boat from near Oldenberg, Germany, in 1834 and settled with her husband in a small, Catholic community 100 miles north of Cincinnati.

During her life, she produced more than 1,000 pages of writings and drawings about the joys and hardships of life in the Ohio wilderness. She wrote about living in a dark, foreboding forest, her fear of Indian attacks, losing two children at birth, and carrying on with the farm after her husband was crippled from a fall.

To accompany the text, she drew hundreds of pictures of pioneer homes, tools, flowers, barns, sunsets, people, and farm animals.

Since the last family wedding in October, I picked up Grandma Boeke's book again and read about weddings at St. John, the farm community in which she lived.

Most mid-1800s marriages took place outdoors, she wrote, noting that early in the morning, the bride and her family would walk the narrow wooded paths that led to the bridegroom's home. It was common for the younger unmarried men to play tricks on the foot travelers, "felling trees, or knotting and tying grapevines in the path. Now and then they conceal a gun to go off … frightening all with the commotion, noise, and smoke."

Although no guns were fired at my family's weddings, revelers did decorate the newlyweds' automobiles with signs and tin cans and, in keeping with the farm tradition from whence we came, older unmarried siblings were obliged to dance in a hog trough, a wooden furrow brought to the reception hall specifically for the occasion.

Although today's newlyweds are toasted with champagne, the men of St. John met the approaching bride and her family with "grog," which helped "quiet the nerves and to bring on a good appetite."

And while my niece and nephews received gifts for which they had registered at various retail stores, a pioneer couple received "hammers, saws, sled, plow, and every farm tool imaginable."

After reading Grandma Boeke's account of weddings, I was struck by the similarity of practices, even though the specifics have changed with succeeding generations.

But one tradition that does not translate into today's customs is how the pioneers occupied the "100 dogs" that accompanied the guests to the celebration. To keep them out of the way, the bridegroom's family "let a hundred live rabbits loose in the forest, and dogs searched until time to go home."

Grandma Boeke's words help to reinforce the continuity of our lives with those who came before, just as the electronic recordings of my family's weddings will help succeeding generations better understand our lives.

Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living in Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is lks260@aol.com.