Mortons 3: Exclusively on Instagram! (I miss Addie’s blogging)

[Noquiver]

Fair I shouldn’t have commented on Keni’s size/shape. I’m also a bit confused by the colour scheme: Keni, Lise and Gabby are in gold/yellow dresses, Mariah is in dark green and Amanda is in a purple dress? And the other 13 (!) bridesmaids are in peachy/blush.
 

also I’m just blown away by the wedding party size:  I counted 17 total bridesmaids?! So it’s  a bigger wedding party then Martha, isn’t it? Is that approaching a problem with COVID-19 gathering restrictions in Georgia?! My count would be 34 groomsmen/bridesmaid assuming matching number, 31 nieces/nephews, so 67 person bridal party?

[SolomonFundy]

I strongly suspect that a few of the wedding attendants didn't get their intended dresses in time. The timeline was tight, many boutiques are closed or operating with limited staff, and it's obvious she didn't go the Bontrager stretch-knit Amazon route. If I had to hazard a guess, the golden yellow was intended as the original dress color, but not many could be culled from the various locations of whatever chain bridal shop she used. They ordered all that were available, then filled in the rest with the peach, which was clearly more abundantly available. I believe the yellow was the original plan because it's Addie's favorite color (Martha did the same). However, it's an unusual color for bridesmaids dresses, so they were probably limited to sample gowns in whatever stores had them in stock. 

Between the color palette and the variety of sizes that needed to be fit, not even accounting for pregnancies in the mix, it is probably inevitable that some of the attendants ended up with lost/missing, or badly altered dresses. It makes sense they went with wearing whatever they had on hand from other recent weddings. 

My waste conscious hippie heart is glad to see that they've continued adding to the family stock of simple tulle-skirt flower girl dresses as needed instead of buying everything new every time. They've been using the same ones for at least 6 years now, and they've gotten a lot of mileage out of them. They'll always need to add one or two for new cousins or to replace damaged older dresses, but for a family like this, a bumper crop of white/off white fairy dresses for the army of future helpmeets is just practical. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

10 hours ago, fundiefan said:

Two of the flower girls were Bethany Lane's girls. Not actual nieces. From Keni's pics, at least her youngest 2-1 an infant-were not in the wedding. The new twins of Dorothy couldn't have been in it either. I think some were Michael's family & some obviously of friends. 

I bet they just consider Bethany’s kids nieces and nephews since all three of Bethany’s biological siblings married a Morton and produced a bunch of nieces and nephews. I know they aren’t biologically related but the Smortons are so intertwined it would be hard for an outsider to realized Bethany’s kids aren’t part of the huge amount of relatives. Plus she chose the Morton’s over her own family in the big split. I would have too. 

[freethemall]

I do think the multicolor bridesmaid dresses are a big fundie trend right now - see Jinger, Carlin Bates, even Alison Bontrager in a way. So I'm thinking it was deliberate, and I actually kind of like it. 

Also it wouldn't be unrealistic for Keni to be pregnant again right? I've totally lost track with her and Alyssa at this point. Otherwise their bellies are just going to always be either post-partum or partum for the next 10+ years with little recovery time in between, which is quite sad (not for their appearance but overall health).

Martha posted a bunch of photos in her gram stories, they're public! I actually really like the color scheme and Adeline looks beautiful and like a classy woman - how refreshing to not watch a teenage bride get married!

(Tried doing a spoiler, didnt work)

Edited September 13, 2020 by freethemall

[fundiefan]

12 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I bet they just consider Bethany’s kids nieces and nephews since all three of Bethany’s biological siblings married a Morton and produced a bunch of nieces and nephews. I know they aren’t biologically related but the Smortons are so intertwined it would be hard for an outsider to realized Bethany’s kids aren’t part of the huge amount of relatives. Plus she chose the Morton’s over her own family in the big split. I would have too. 

What she considers nieces & nephews versus the children of her siblings, which number 46, doesn't play into the count of the suspected photographer was all I was saying. 

Seeing the video Norma posted, I am done trying to figure out their wedding. Everything I've suspected has been wrong. Tons of colors, kids everywhere, I suspect changing of clothes which made me think someone wasn't in the wedding party. i suppose that's what happens when you gawk from afar! Ha!

 

 

[LurkerOverThePond]

On 9/11/2020 at 10:16 PM, fundiefan said:

...Addie seems to think of Paraguay as dreamily as she thinks of curtains blowing in the wind...

Ok, this actually made me laugh aloud. And not just any curtains, but long, white, billowy curtains!

Based on the few pictures we've seen so far, the newlyweds look very happy. Addie is beautiful, and good for her going for a not-your-standard-modest dress. I'd love to see a picture of all the bridesmaids. I did not spot Dorothy, but she must have been part of the party. I never noticed it until now but Addie looks so much like Katie in these photos. Do we know who was the maid/matron of honor?

Kressant having their own "wedding party" for Addie was kind of sweet, too. They clearly are close, and this was probably the only way Kressant was able to "attend" the festivities and celebrate along with Addie.

Addie was one of my pet fundies, too, and I wish the new couple all the happiness. I just hope (probably in vain) that they would leave other people's life choices their own and not shove toxic anti-choice patriarchy (yes, John, that really exists in your own damn family!) down their throats.

Edited September 13, 2020 by LurkerOverThePond

[browngrl]

Is it just me or does Adeline's wedding feel like the end of an era? The two boys left at home will marry whoever they choose and those weddings will largely be left to the girl's family. The blog has long since gone cold so all the original stories will stay up for a while but gradually those links will also break. The younger Morton brides are only public to sell their MLM products and increasingly fundies are going private. Will we ever hear a Morton pontificate as Pa Morton did around the weddings of Katie or Kressant or will we see a wedding where the bride washes the groom's feet? I doubt it. I'm kind of sad. Not sad enough to amount to anything but still a bit sad.

[JMO]

Norma also wrote that there were 18 flower girls.  

[fundiefan]

1 minute ago, browngrl said:

Is it just me or does Adeline's wedding feel like the end of an era? The two boys left at home will marry whoever they choose and those weddings will largely be left to the girl's family. The blog has long since gone cold so all the original stories will stay up for a while but gradually those links will also break. The younger Morton brides are only public to sell their MLM products and increasingly fundies are going private. Will we ever hear a Morton pontificate as Pa Morton did around the weddings of Katie or Kressant or will we see a wedding where the bride washes the groom's feet? I doubt it. I'm kind of sad. Not sad enough to amount to anything but still a bit sad.

I think - and this is based entirely on opinion - that social media has changed the way fundies put themselves out there. 

The Internet, with blogs & web pages, was a big thing for people wanting to spread their version of their god. Easy tools. Set up a website and you're gold. The years between the mid 90's when personal computers & the Internet began taking off and being part of everyone's every day lives, through about the mid 2000's and the advent of social media, was a golden age, of sorts, for fundies like the Mortons, Smiths, VF, Scott Brown, Botkins, etc. 

But, with social media, people in general are keeping things "closer" so to speak. Instead of reading the blogs of 100 different random people, we're interacting with those on our friends lists. We're following pages/IG/Twitter of specific people. Instead of keeping a blog that is out there for the world to see, fundies are keeping it friends only and such to avoid kickback. 

I think in general, that limits the reach of online "ministries". Especially when they themselves choose to only share things within their inner circles. Personally, with the exception of the fundies I follow, I don't leave my social circles when online very often. Of course I read the news and search for stuff and get lost in rabbit holes. But, I don't hit up 10 blogs a day to see what fundies are up to. I have FJ for that! 

Anyway. I think it's a progression thing. Times have changed, and the ways of "reaching audiences" have changed. I don't doubt that none of their beliefs have changed - Marlin Bontrager is an example of how extremely unmovable they can be - they just don't use the very public ways of spewing their crap. Even the ones who do still blog and have web pages apart from social media are inconsistent in what and when they post. 

I think in the case of the Mortons, they changed somewhat since the S'Morton days but not necessarily for the better - the Bret Smith influence was pretty ugly on that family / their entire circle. Once Bret was no longer the big wig (after the 3rd S'Morton wedding, he really had nothing to offer, although to this day he is still trying) the Mortons just moved on to other families, and even brought more into their "fold". But, I think Adeline & Michael are the only exception to their "standard" of dating/marrying. Every one of the Morton offspring married someone from a family they regularly interacted with. To varying degrees - from the enmeshment with the Smiths to the more casual of, say, the Kendalls. Even Martha & Tayte - the Alexanders weren't part of the Morton circle all along, but they were pretty tight for quite a while before Martha & Tayte even got engaged. So much so the Alexanders were taking on a lot of the Morton ways. Sam & Alyssa are in pictures together when they were 10. Same with Campbell & John and Kennedy & Andrew. Dorothy married a Sanders - and despite Noah's false claims that he never talked to her, Noah was in her brother's wedding as a groomsman - they knew each other and grew up together. I'd bet all their weddings had Papa Smurf Morton pontificating about god, marriage, babies, etc. If not him, then an in-law - Frank Campana is a windbag on the level of Marlin Bontrager. 

God, that's a lot of words. Sorry. It's just something I've been reading about a lot - not in the context of fundies, but in general. How the changes of the Internet have changed the way we interact/communicate. Just as its very existence changed things, the way it is used also changes things in larger society. 

[Noquiver]

56 minutes ago, fundiefan said:

But, with social media, people in general are keeping things "closer" so to speak. Instead of reading the blogs of 100 different random people, we're interacting with those on our friends lists. We're following pages/IG/Twitter of specific people. Instead of keeping a blog that is out there for the world to see, fundies are keeping it friends only and such to avoid kickback. 

 

I agree with this and also wonder with social media and the ease of commenting has changed how much they feel like sharing. Before on a blog  you had to take photos on a camera, upload them to a computer, choose which ones to put in a blog post and then upload that post vs. social media where you snap and upload a photo instantly. So if you’re maybe not driving safely with your kids and you document it and people see it and comment on it (Kennedy) and you don’t like that... you don’t share as much. 
 

Addy’s friend Sarah has a personal blog and has appeared to increase her posting to it since she took on the “job” of being a housewife (don’t worry there’s a whole post explaining/defending that choice. Because she’s special and godly and better then you of course.) I really hope that she inspires Addy to start her own blog as she clearly really loved writing for the family one. I was trying to find photos of the other Morton daughter’s weddings and stumbled across her post for Dorthys wedding and whew it’s a classic Addy post.  
 

I was looking I saw the photo Alyssa posted of her family and thoroughly approved of the groomsmen look that I assume Sam was wearing (he had a boutonnière) and was happy they hopefully got that right. Truly Martha’s groomsmen look was one of my least favourites ever, and in general fundie brides  appear to struggle with that to a certain degree which is wild to me because it’s not hard! Jessa and Ben showed the bare minimum in my opinion (jeans are not great Keni and Andrew!) and Alyssa and Campbell knocked it out of the park because they chose simple. Suits. That. Fit. It’s that easy! 

Edited September 13, 2020 by Noquiver

[hoipolloi]

2 hours ago, fundiefan said:

that social media has changed the way fundies put themselves out there. 

IMO, back in the fundie blog heyday, fundies clearly saw the blogging as part of the Great Commission. Somehow, we heathens would read their daily posts, marvel at the beauty and perfection of their lives, and just throw ourselves into Jesus worship.  Not the wrong kind of Jesus worship, of course, like Roman Catholicism or the LDS church, but their fundie-specific brand of Jesus worship.  Also -- and this is a key point -- many fundie bloggers caught on early how to monetize their blogs, which fit in with the SAH restrictions on money-making for fundie women. This combination of godly & mercantile motives sustained fundie blogging for some years, through the mid-2000s at least. 

It took them a while to realize that while some (mostly their family & friends) came to admire and praise their blogs, others (like us here at FJ) came to laugh and snark. I do not recall any of these bloggers boasting about converts they'd made through blogging. In fact, I'd say that the actual number of real converts to fundie Christianity due to their blogging is vanishingly small, if there are any. If anyone here knows of one or more converts who "came to Jesus" explicitly through fundie blogging, please share.

To what extent the rise of other social media, especially Instagram, have played a role in the decline of fundie blogs, I'm not sure. It probably has had an effect, given what we've seen in the S'Morton crowd although FB still seems to be a popular medium, especially for pushing shite, whether it's MLMs or Q-Anon.

Edited September 13, 2020 by hoipolloi

[HermioneSparrow]

Campbell posted some pictures of the entire wedding party and Dorothy is nowhere to be found. I'd be shocked if for whatever reason she did not go.

Katie & Martha are right next to Addie so I bet they were matrons of honor.

[hoipolloi]

As seen in the group photos Campbell posted, the combination of colors in the female attendants' dresses is quite nice, whether or not it is intentional. 

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by hoipolloi
Clarity

[albireo]

Confirmation (?) that Dorothy was indeed in attendance. But where was she in the photos?

https://www.harvie.farm/happenings/rora-valley-farms/18187/delivery-on-wednesday-this-week

[NachosFlandersStyle]

4 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

If anyone here knows of one or more converts who "came to Jesus" explicitly through fundie blogging, please share.

This is an interesting point and I'm curious too. I imagine some people remained longer in the cult because of encouragement from blogs they followed, or added new and more extreme ideas to their existing repertoire because a blogger they liked espoused them. But I have a hard time picturing someone who comes across, say, somebody's saga of a no-touch courtship and decides "hey, maybe I should get into this religion thing."

[browngrl]

I always got the feeling that many fundie bloggers were not blogging so much to convert people but because they wanted the company of the on line community. A lot of the girls and women seemed lonely   even when they were going on and on about fundie things.

[SolomonFundy]

3 hours ago, browngrl said:

I always got the feeling that many fundie bloggers were not blogging so much to convert people but because they wanted the company of the on line community. A lot of the girls and women seemed lonely   even when they were going on and on about fundie things.

It's kind of a mixed bag, in terms of intent. We will never know for some of the old bloggers, though I suspect it was just an accepted trend to allow young, isolated creative types (be they mothers or teen daughters of fundy families) to passively socialize through the relative safety of a blog. However, at least some of it WAS intended to be an organized lure to a given faith practice. I know that the Mormon church began specifically encouraging their female congregants (especially the young mothers) to start blogs about 15 years ago. The idea was that it would be a form of subtle evangelism: show the sordid regulars how much better life is when you tithe to the right people. Design Mom, NatTheFatRat, NieNie Dialogues, and Rock Star Diaries all got their start during that phase. Despite their different ages and perspectives now, you can compare their earliest posts and see a LOT of similar content. The point was to present a very sanitized, healthy, unabashedly feminine web presence that would be persuasive without being brash or confrontational. Adorable children were a plus. Subtle links to the LDS website were essential. 

 

[Noquiver]

19 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

As seen in the group photos Campbell posted, the combination of colors in the female attendants' dresses is quite nice, whether or not it is intentional. 

 

I agree and Mariah’s  green dress made a lot more sense seeing the groomsmen were in green. 

[fundiefan]

Is there a flower thing I don't know about? It looks like some of the bridesmaids have wrist corsages. Some have full bouquets. Some have small bouquets. I've never seen that before. 

[SolomonFundy]

Addie's done a lot of wedding florals. I'd guess that this was something she either saw elsewhere and liked, or imagined for her wedding since it's pretty uncommon. 

I really, really liked the flowers. The bridesmaid dresses would have been even nicer if the variety had been either more or less, but the weird bulk of peach with a handful of yellow, and then random single shot colors is odd to me. However, maybe this is just my age showing. A quick look at Pinterest suggests that this may be a trend now. 

[HermioneSparrow]

Some relative of Michael posted pictures on FB about the wedding. There's a lot of pictures and a few ones from the rehearsal.

A few takes:

• Dorothy and Noah are not in any of the pictures of the wedding, reception or rehearsal (there's tons of pics of the wedding party and lots of the people attending the wedding)
• I think Martha was the MOH, she was front and center in the wedding party pictures and one picture with Addie and Michael and who it seems to be the best man and her
• Tayte was a groomsman, Cleveland, Sam, Andrew, John and I think the younger brothers (I can't distinct those two)
• I think Katie's oldest daughter was a bridesmaid
• There was dancing in the reception
• There's a picture of Alyssa and Sam slow-dancing and she looks tiny
• I'm trying not to speculate but there's a couple of pictures of Martha holding her stomach
• Katie caught the bouquet
• Michael was crying when Addie was walking towards the aisle, they seemed really really happy
• Josiah and Mariah were singing in the wedding ceremony

Edited September 14, 2020 by HermioneSparrow

[caitrona]

There was a picture on one of the IG stories that looked like Noah & Dorothy's twins dressed up, unless they have another set of twin nephews about the same age? I'm trying to remember whose story it was.  But I couldn't pick out their older kids in any of the group shots.  I'd be shocked if they weren't there, but they do have infants and may not have felt comfortable with covid risks? 

[JermajestyDuggar]

39 minutes ago, caitrona said:

There was a picture on one of the IG stories that looked like Noah & Dorothy's twins dressed up, unless they have another set of twin nephews about the same age? I'm trying to remember whose story it was.  But I couldn't pick out their older kids in any of the group shots.  I'd be shocked if they weren't there, but they do have infants and may not have felt comfortable with covid risks? 

Maybe they only went for the wedding and skipped the reception because of the twins. Or left the reception very early. 

Katie catching the bouquet just makes me sad. I can’t imagine her getting married anytime soon. There probably aren’t too many fundie men wanting to marry a single mother of 8 kids with an ex in prison for rape.

[albireo]

I'm very surprised that Katie even went out to try and catch the bouquet. I guess she's casually looking for someone.

Inquiring minds want to know...who's the relative that posted on FB about the wedding?

[VBOY9977]

4 minutes ago, albireo said:

I'm very surprised that Katie even went out to try and catch the bouquet. I guess she's casually looking for someone.

Inquiring minds want to know...who's the relative that posted on FB about the wedding?

The family member’s name is Cathy Johnson, you can look for her in Addie or Michael’s friends lists (both public). Scroll a bit down her feed and you’ll see the album.