Faith and family: Five generations of one family married at small church in Prairieburg

CEDAR RAPIDS - Weddings are nearly always a family affair.

For Cedar Rapids newlyweds Molly McDonald and Brandon Burgeson, though, their June 14 wedding was particularly so.

Molly, 29, and Brandon, 32, were wed in Prairieburg at St. Joseph Catholic Church.

On their wedding day, the couple stood on the same altar as four generations of Molly's family had before. Her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were all married at St. Joseph.

'It was a big deal for me,” she says. 'My parents taught me about tradition. I don't think you can know where you are going before you know where you come from. Faith and family are the two most important things to me. And I am proud of our family history.”

It started when John and Mary Kula - who immigrated to the United States in 1854 - were married at the then new parish for Irish and Czech immigrants.

Their son John Jr. married Anna Kula at St. Joseph's in 1914, 100 years before Molly and Brandon would carry on the tradition. Molly wore Anna's gold wedding band on her wedding day as 'something old.”

Next, Arthur and Lillian Kula were married there in 1945. Then, Molly's parents, Charles and Kathleen McDonald, were married in the church in 1979. Like Molly and Brandon, they, too, were 29 and 32 on their wedding day.

'The connections were a bit uncanny,” Molly says.

On their wedding day, the latest generation took pictures in various spots around the sanctuary and outside that had significance to their family, including in a stained-glass window that has the Kula family name on it.

'It was so great,” says Molly's mother, Kathleen McDonald. 'We have such good memories there and are big on tradition and our roots.”

Extended family, many of whom live scattered across the Midwest, still worship at the small church, which now only holds Masses on the second and fourth Sundays of the month. They gather for weddings, for Mass on Memorial Day and sadder occasions, such as funerals.

'It's a home base for us,” Kathleen McDonald says.