OPEN POST: The Lost Photographs of a Forbidden Gay Wedding

68 years ago, a young man walked into photo shop in Philadelphia to have his wedding photos developed. Despite gay marriage being illegal in 1957, the images showed the ceremony of a same-sex couple celebrating their union with friends. Unfortunately, the store owner refused to return the photographs, deeming them inappropriate, so the young man and his groom never got the chance to see them.

As it turned out, store policy allowed staff to keep confiscated photographs, so an employee held onto them, her daughter discovering them some 60 years later after she died. In a letter she wrote to ONE Institute, an LGBTQ archive in Los Angeles, she wrote, "My mother had a somewhat photographic memory for faces and retained these in the event the customers who dropped them off ever came back to the shop so that she could give them to the customers on the sly."

In 2013, the daughter sold the images on eBay to someone who later donated them to the ONE Archives in Los Angeles and the John J. Wilcox Jr. Archives in Philadelphia. Both organizations have been trying to locate the men and their guests ever since, but unfortunately, they have never been found or identified.

Michael Oliveira, an archivist at ONE says, "It's a needle in a haystack - there's too many questions and not enough information about this photo collection. While many people and families tend to stay put in the Delaware Valley area, we can only speculate about where they were taken, who took the photos, and so much more - and never arrive at an answer."

What say you, dear Peckers - who are these men and their guests? Tell me their names, about the events of their wedding day, their honeymoon, their future. If we can only speculate about who they were and what their lives were like, well, we may as well then. What's their story? Take a look at their wedding photos below and share your version of events in the comments. We love a happy ending here at the Manor (you know which kind).