Tootie Tails and Salty at the altar.

Ponyland's first wedding took place more than twenty years ago, in the summer of 1989. It was the wedding of Salty and Tootie Tails, and everyone in town was there to celebrate. Ponyland was much smaller then, with a population of only about fifty ponies -- but though times have changed and everyone is older now, the ponies all remember the wedding like it was yesterday.

Salty was a sailor, a merchant and a fisherman, and in his travels he met Tootie Tails by chance on a tropical island several miles off the coast. She was a local girl with island tastes, who loved fresh fruit, summer sunshine, and the smell of the ocean. To Salty, she seemed like a tropical princess. He brought her back to the Ponyland settlement, introduced her to his friends, and proposed.

Tootie Tails with her bouquet.

The ceremony.

The wedding took place in late July, on the beach. It was the most extravagant celebration Ponyland had seen at that time. Salty hauled a cargo of tropical plants and flowers from the island to decorate the arbor, and Buttons, the local seamstress, spent weeks on Tootie Tail's dress, satiny pink and spangled with seashells.

The best man was Steamer, Salty's long-time friend and former college roommate. The two of them had gone to medical school together in their youth, where they became fast friends, studying together after classes, drinking and fishing on weekends. Even now, they still spend more time with each other than with their wives.

Salty and Steamer.

Balloons, Tootie Tails, Sparkle, and Applejack.

Tootie Tails was still new in town at the time of the wedding, but she was a cheerful, loquacious pony, and had no trouble finding her place. The wives of Salty's friends all took her in and made her feel at home, and she looked on them as her new sisters.

Their daughters were the flower girls at the ceremony.

The flower girls: Baby Tree, Baby Fleecy, and Baby Woolly.

Tootie Tails with her maid of honor.

And Steamer's wife, Princess Sparkle, was the maid of honor. Tootie Tails and Sparkle are still good friends, and often see each other at sporting events where their children compete.

All of Salty's old friends from medical school were there to bid farewell to Salty's long bachelorhood and welcome him to the world of married stallions. All three of them had met their wives in college, and they were glad to see that at last even Salty, that perpetual rambler, had found a mare who was right for him.

Salty's old college buddies: Tree, Salty, Steamer, and Presents.

Baby P&B brings Salty the ring.

Presents' son, Baby Presents n' Balloons, was the ringbearer at the ceremony. P&B has never been one for fancy parties, but even he had to admit that the bride looked stunning.

The wedding of Salty and Tootie Tails was one of the biggest events in town, and the reporters from the Ponyland Press were there to cover everything, with their notebads and Polaroids on hand. Everything went according to plan, except when Presents n' Balloons dropped the ring and nearly lost it in the sand.

Waverunner covers the event for the press.

The wedding party.

The press got some wonderful photos for the paper, and for Tootie Tails' scrapbook, too.

After the wedding, there was cake and ice cream.

Refreshments.

Tootie Tails poses at the refreshment table.

And champagne.

Cuddles, a reporter for the Ponyland Press, caught the bouquet. (Twenty years later, it seems the prophecy has at last come true: today, Cuddles does indeed have a husband of her own.)

Cuddles with the bouquet.

The Tootie Tails family today: Salty, Tootie Tails, Baby Pineapple, and foster-child Baby Sunbright.

And Tootie Tails and Salty? Times have changed for them too. Over the years they've fostered three children, and are now fostering a fourth, in addition to raising Tootie Tails' own daughter, Baby Pineapple. The two of them own a popular local restaurant, Tootie Tails' Bar & Grill, where they serve smoked pork and seafood with island sauces. But outside of work they don't see much of each other. Tootie Tails is busy all over town, attending parties and events, buying things for the kids, visiting the spa and the salon; Salty spends as much time as he can fishing on the lake, or playing poker with his friends at the bar.

But at heart they're still the same young ponies they were twenty years ago -- the sailor and the island princess, who met by chance in the middle of the ocean, and got married on the beach in the summer of 1989.

After the ceremony, posing for photos.