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| Branson Titanic’s Grand Staircase with the ships First Class Maid Jaynee Vanderburg. |
At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, as the mighty unsinkable RMS Titanic slipped to her watery grave in the north Atlantic, the lives of those passengers who survived were forever altered. As passengers board Branson’s “Titanic-Worlds Largest Museum Attraction” they are handed a “boarding pass” for one of the Titanic’s passengers. As they tour the museum they will find out whether or not “they” lived or died that night.
Those receiving the boarding pass of “Mr David Vartanian” might be interested in a column entitled “From the Titanic, a new life together emerges” written by Jim Stingl and posted on line recently by the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. The column reports that Melissa Vartanian, the great granddaughter of Titanic survivor David Vartanian, and her fiancé, Vache Mikaelian, were to be married on May 13 at the Milwaukee Public Museum’s “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition.”
The column goes on to say that when asked if she thought getting married around the artifacts from the disaster could be, as Vartanian herself put it, “A bad omen” she said, " Yes. I mean, the thing sank and more than 1,500 people died. It was a tragedy, an absolute tragedy that happened. The difference for my family is that it was ultimately about hope and freedom.” She continued, “For my family, it brought life.”
Evidently, marriage in connection with the Titanic does not seem to be “A bad Omen” for too many people. Mary Kellogg Joslyn, the co-owner of Branson’s Titanic with her husband John Joslyn, said that over 1,900 wedding vows have been renewed and about 90 weddings have been performed aboard Branson’s Titanic since it opened in April of 2006. She said that the vast majority of the ceremonies have been performed on the ships elegant Grand Staircase which, according to Wikipedia, was built using the ship’s original deck plans. Joslyn also indicated that none of the ceremonies have directly involved relatives of any of the Titanic’s passengers.
