My son and I were in a friend's bridal party when he was a few months shy of his third birthday - his job was to walk the flower girl, Nicole, down the aisle. About six months later, we were watching a movie when a wedding scene came on - he pointed to the TV and said, "Look Mommy! That looks just like when I married Nicole!".

Maureen

When I was about 7 or 8 my grandmother got divorced. I used to watch Happy Days a lot at that point so one day I went up to my grandmother and told her she was "Hot to Trot". She wasn't impressed. I had NO idea what it really meant or why she was mad at me.

RLD

As a child, my cousin was so insistant that I would marry him when we were adults. He used to calmly say, "Yes, we will," and I'd yell, "NO, WE WON'T!!!!" All of the adults in our family would ignore us and never try to stop him, so I believed they were all in on a plot to force me to marry my cousin when we were of age.

Kiana

When saying wedding vows instead of saying "do you take this man/woman to be your lawfully wedded husband/wife", I thought it said "awfully wedded"

Jaime

when i was young, my mom told me that a married chinese woman would put her husband's last name at the front of her original name. but she didnt tell me that ppl would do this only when calling married ladies in formal events. when i checked my mom's ID card, there was only her name. so i thought she didnt really marry to my dad officially.

oiman

When I was a kid I often heard my father refer to so-and-so "shacking up" with someone. In my mind (as I deduced from his tone of voice that this was a bad thing) that it meant that these people had done something bad and had to go live in one of those squatty little tar paper shacks that I'd see along the side of the road sometimes.

Lynn

hen i was young and far from the concept of babies, i arrived at my own conclusion and even explained to my mom -" in my opinion there must be something in the wedding neckband(in hindu culture we use the neckband instead of the ring) which actually causes the woman to bear babies. otherwise why on earth would women become pregnant only after they are married ".
my mom just laughed diminishing my enthusiasm to publish my findings!

pjn

When I was little, I saw a movie where two people went up to a glass wall in a hospital and pointed to a baby and said, "Look! That's our baby!" I thought this meant that people laid out babies in hospitals attached to churches, and after people got married they'd go and pick out their baby next door.

Anon

I used to believe that women got pregnant if they didn't get married soon enough. Like if a single pregnant girl was on TV, and I asked my mom how she was having a baby without a husband, my mom would say, "Oh she messed around before she got married." I thought that meant she took her sweet time getting to the alter.

blah blah

My parents have the same middle name (thou spelled different) so when i was little I believed that when a man and woman got married the woman took both the middle and last name of the man.

Jennifer S

I used to believe that siblings had to marry only siblings in the other family. For example, my husband's brother could only marry my sister, and so on. I tried asking my parents what would happen if someone with 2 sisters married someone with 1 brother, but they didn't understand what I was talking about.

Courtney Imbert

When I was younger , I used to think that once you fell in love , you'd immediately get married and right after the wedding , the bride would be rushed to the hospital and out popped a baby! I think it had something to do with a movie I watched ? I'll never know.

Cara

when I was younger, I used to believe that my parents got married and were trying to keep it secret from me. (they never got married) One time I found a prom picture and swore it was they're wedding picture. I was mad at them for not telling me.

Occeannia

I used to believe (er, forget?) that people were born and died, so I always thought it was really hard to find someone to marry, because everyone got used up so fast!

Anon

...that marriages were consumated in the back of the church after the wedding in some sort of closet. I knew in involved being naked but not much else. I thought marriage would be nice except for being naked in front of a girl.

Anon

I used to think that mere marrying will lead to child birth,till i was 10.

dan

When I was little, I used to think that you had to get married to live together. My cousin (who was my best friend) and I decided we wanted to get married, because after all how much fun would it be to be able to hang out all the time?

K

When I will little I used to believe that when you got married, you signed a contract to order a baby! LOL

Kriatina

I used to beleive that it was illegal for a black person and a white person to get married, up until 1st grade when I saw a sing-a-long video in Music class and the hosts were a white woman and a black man, so I assumed they were married. When I went home I said to my mom "Today in school we saw a movie where a white woman and a black man were married. Isn't that illegal?" My mother then told me that that's perfectly legal.

Ben

When I was little, I asked my mother how people found their spouses, and she told me that, when women wanted to get married, they went out and looked for a husband. (This is how I remember her explanation, at any rate. In reality, it was probably not this simplistic.) Anyway, for several years, the image in my mind of what it looked like when people decided to get married was a woman walking down the street calling, "Who wants to marry me?" It was always the same street, too--this place by the train station where we used to pick my dad up from work.

mollyann