When it came time for bride Jillian Klatte to choose a florist for her wedding, she already had the perfect person in mind for the role: her 100-year-old, gardening-loving grandmother.
Jillian grew up watching her grandmother, Ruthie Klatte, lovingly tend her garden filled with colorful blooms from zinnias to roses, according to local TV station KARE 11. So when Jillian was getting ready to choose flower arrangements for her upcoming wedding, an idea suddenly struck in her mind that Ruthie would be the perfect choice.
“She’s been a role model my whole life. She never stopped being a role model. So I just said, I want my grandma to do that,” Jillian explained of her grandmother.
When Jillian and her now-husband Elijah tied the knot on Oct. 14 atop the IDS Tower in Minneapolis, the centenarian proudly walked down the aisle carrying a basket of rose petals that she playfully tossed. Fittingly, Ruthie wore a floral print jacket over her dress and a floral corsage on her wrist.
Ruthie’s lovely act as the flower girl earned her enthusiastic applause from Jillian and Elijah’s guests. After the ceremony, grandmother and granddaughter celebrated the moment and posed for photos together.
“She’s the rock in our whole family,” Jillian said. “She’s great. She’s a rock star.”
Despite two recent knee replacements, Ruthie still spends every day tending to her flowers, watering and weeding. “Flowers make me feel good,” she told the new paper.
And she will continue gardening as long as she can.
“As long as the wheels are turning,” she joked about her gardening habit, referring both to the wheelbarrow she pushed — and to herself — as she made her way around her garden.
“People don’t believe I’m 100,” added Ruthie, who recently celebrated her birthday with her family.
One of her gifts? The sassy yellow T-shirt she was wearing, emblazoned with the words “Limited Edition Vintage Est. 1923. Aged to Perfection.”
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In a similar story a few years ago, Tennessee bride Lyndsey Raby had not one — but four grandmothers — serving as flower girls at her wedding. Among them were her two grandmothers and her great-grandmother, as well as her fiance’s grandmother.
“I’m so happy,” Raby said Today Style at the time. “A lot of women don’t have one grandparent at their wedding, and I was blessed to have them all.”
The women — who wore matching light blue lace dresses and jackets for the occasion — formed a good bond during the experience and are now in regular contact. “They’re all best friends now and they talk on Facebook,” Raby said. “Family is the most important thing to all of us.”
Wedding photographer Natalie Caho recalled being amazed by the grandmothers’ energy and excitement throughout the event.
“I didn’t expect the level of sass these girls brought,” she said. “The whole day they had the energy of a little girl who was in the same position. It really just goes to show that age is just a number.”
Like Raby, Wolfgang Van Halen’s wife Andrai Allsop opted to have her grandmothers be the flower girl at the couple’s Oct. 15 wedding, and it was a full-circle moment for the bride.
“My grandfather passed away in March, but when he and my grandmother got married in the early 1990s, I was about 3 years old and I was their flower girl,” Allsop told PEOPLE.
“So I thought it would be appropriate and just a beautiful moment to have my mom’s mom and my dad’s mom be our flower girls.”
Van Halen is the son of music legend Eddie Van Halen and actress Valerie Bertinelli.
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Source: HIS Education