The Accident Julia Child Was In Right Before Her Wedding Ceremony
Julia Child, in a sense, was known — and beloved — for her accidents. The renowned author and cooking show host starred in 201 episodes of "The French Chef," and these culinary adventures were unedited, per Eater. Child's bravery led to an unapologetic slew of on-camera mistakes, not to mention her iconic quip: "If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?" (via Taste of Home).
Child's cheery personality even made its way onto "Saturday Night Live," when actor Dan Aykroyd — decked out in an apron and permed curls — portrays a relentlessly upbeat Julia Child who accidentally cuts her hand while deboning a chicken. (According to The Daily Meal, Child actually adored the parody.) But hours before her own wedding, Child found herself in an even more dangerous predicament with then-fiancé Paul Child. And while it was slightly more serious than a mistake in the kitchen, she handled it just as though it were a piece of lamb dropped on the floor. In true Julia Child fashion, she overcame the obstacle and kept going — though not without a few scratches.
An unexpected obstacle
In 1946, the soon-to-wed Julia McWilliams and Paul Child were injured in a car accident just one day before their ceremony. Nonetheless, the wedding proceeded as planned (via Mental Floss). A photograph archived in The New York Review does indeed show a bandage-covered Julia Child, happily standing beside her new husband. Child described the car accident herself, albeit briefly. In her memoir, "My Life In France," she wrote that on her wedding day, she was "extremely happy, but a bit banged up from a car accident the day before." She doesn't describe where or when, and in the book, Child quickly shifts to write about her return to France several years later, recounting her adoration for the country and her "many boo-boos" (her own words) while studying at The Cordon Bleu.
Despite the scare, she chose to focus instead on the joy of her wedding — we wouldn't expect anything less from Julia Child. Well before she was the French food extraordinaire we know, she'd met Paul Child in Sri Lanka as they worked for the Office of Strategic Services, according to The New Yorker. The two were 10 years apart in age, grew up on opposite coasts of the United States, and their paths crossed by chance as desk mates working for the federal government. If Julia and Paul Child were meant to be together, a car accident would surely not stop their wedding.