Curiosities

Dedé Gadelha and Caetano Veloso tried to keep the place and date of their wedding a secret. The idea was to make it simple, inviting just the two families, their closest friends and the ushers and bridesmaids. However, news got out and hundreds of people – most of them students – crowded outside the Church of São Pedro, in Salvador, on the morning of Monday, November 20^th, 1967.

With traffic clogged in the surrounding streets, and store windows shuttered, the tumult was such that not even the groom, wearing an orange turtle-neck shirt – the same that he had worn on the TV Record musical programs – and sporting a yellow crepe paper flower, was able to enter the church for the ceremony.

Until then, neither he nor Dedé – who had gone to the church in the same car – understood why they had been stuck in the traffic for almost thirty minutes. The truth was that the Salvador newspaper Diário de Notícias, had published the time and place the previous evening.  The result was that two and a half hours before the ceremony, students had filled the church, anxious to get a front row view of their new idol and the expected “hippie wedding”.

Among the special guests, Gilberto Gil and Maria Bethânia had entered minutes before. The bride and groom only managed to reach the altar under police escort. Even so, overexcited fans tried to pull Caetano’s hair and touch Dedé’s clothes – a short, white tunic with hood edged in shocking pink worn over breeches. In place of the classic bridal bouquet, Dedé held an enormous bunch of colored crepe paper flowers, created by Ana, the wife of Torquato Neto.

The fans sang “Alegria, Alegria” – “Joy, Joy”, Caetano’s song that had come second in TV Record’s Third Festival of Brazilian Popular Music a month before. The priest tried to get a moment’s silence to begin the celebration, but when he saw Caetano’s mother, dona Canô, overcome with emotion, faint into her daughter Maria Bethânia’s arms, he realized the urgency of the situation and said “Quick, my children! Quick, before they destroy the church!” And so the ceremony ended up lasting little more than a minute.