Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio’s City Hall Wedding, 1954
A judge’s chambers in San Francisco, a brown broadcloth suit with an ermine collar, and a ceremony that was over in a couple of minutes. Perhaps the most famous civil wedding in American history.
On the afternoon of January 14, 1954, the most famous actress in Hollywood and the most famous retired ballplayer in America walked into San Francisco City Hall to be married by a municipal judge. They had hoped to keep it quiet. By the time they came out, several hundred people had filled the corridors, and the photographs of Marilyn Monroe in a dark suit with a white fur collar, laughing beside Joe DiMaggio, became among the most reproduced wedding pictures of the century.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Date | Thursday, January 14, 1954 |
| Place (ceremony) | Judge’s chambers, San Francisco City Hall |
| Reception | None to speak of; the couple drove off that evening |
| The dress (designer) | A dark brown broadcloth suit with a white ermine collar |
| Guests | DiMaggio’s brother Tom, the baseball manager Lefty O’Doul, DiMaggio’s business partner Reno Barsocchini and their wives |
| Officiant | Municipal Judge Charles S. Peery |
The couple
Joe DiMaggio had retired from the New York Yankees in December 1951, a decade after his 56-game hitting streak of 1941, and was a San Francisco hero; he had married his first wife, the actress Dorothy Arnold, at the city’s Saints Peter and Paul Church in 1939. Monroe, a rising star at Twentieth Century-Fox, had met him about two years earlier. “I met him two years ago on a blind date in Los Angeles,” she told reporters at City Hall, adding that the decision had been made only a couple of days before.
The ceremony
The plan was simple: a license, a judge who was an old friend of the groom, and a few witnesses. Word leaked before the couple arrived. Monroe chatted with reporters on the way in; DiMaggio, who disliked the attention, eventually told the press, “All right fellas, I don’t want to rush you, but we’ve got to get on with the ceremony.”
Contemporary accounts timed the service in Judge Charles S. Peery’s chambers from 1:46 p.m. to 1:48 p.m. The witnesses were DiMaggio’s brother Tom, his old friend and baseball manager Frank “Lefty” O’Doul, and his business partner Reno Barsocchini, with their wives. Getting out was harder than getting in: the crowd in the corridors was estimated at around 500, and the couple took a wrong turn into a dead end before finding a way down to the basement and their car.
The dress
Monroe chose not to wear a wedding dress at all. She married in a dark brown broadcloth suit, buttoned high at the neck, with a white ermine collar. It was a deliberately modest choice for a woman whose screen image was anything but, and it suited both the setting and the groom, who preferred his private life private.
The look has lasted because it was so correct for the occasion: a daytime civil ceremony in a public building calls for tailoring, and a single luxurious detail at the collar did the work that a veil does in church. For more on the wedding looks that changed the rules, see our guide to celebrity wedding dresses.
The honeymoon
There was no reception. DiMaggio said they would probably “just get in the car and go,” and they did. The honeymoon proper was in Japan, where large crowds turned out to see Monroe; while there, she left to perform for American troops in Korea.
What came after
The marriage lasted about nine months. Monroe filed for divorce in October 1954, citing mental cruelty. The two remained close. When Monroe died in August 1962, DiMaggio helped arrange her funeral, and for twenty years afterward he had a half-dozen red roses delivered to her crypt in Los Angeles three times a week. He never remarried, and he declined to speak publicly about her for the rest of his life.
Why it mattered
This was the template for the celebrity civil wedding: a courthouse instead of a cathedral, a suit instead of a gown, a few friends instead of a guest list, and the press finding out anyway. Its descendants range from Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in Las Vegas four years later to Justin and Hailey Bieber at a New York courthouse in 2018. It also showed that a bride could look entirely herself, and entirely memorable, in something she might have worn to lunch.
Borrow the idea
Book the courthouse, then dress for it. City halls in San Francisco, New York and elsewhere are handsome buildings; wear something tailored that suits daylight and marble. A skirt suit or a crisp dress with a jacket reads as bridal when it is ivory, cream or, like Monroe’s, a deep chocolate with a pale collar.
Choose one luxurious detail. A fur or feathered collar, a silk scarf, a brooch at the neck or a pair of exceptional gloves carries a civil-ceremony look.
Keep the witnesses to the people who matter. Most civil ceremonies require one or two witnesses. Ask the friends you would call first with news, and take them to lunch afterward. Our guide to the guest list helps if the list starts to grow.
Plan your exit. If your city hall is busy, ask the clerk’s office in advance which doors and corridors are quietest, and have your photographer meet you on the steps rather than trailing you through the building.
Written and edited by the Today’s Weddings editors. How we research and check what we publish is set out in our editorial standards. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
