Priscilla Presley child Lisa Marie Presley
Marriage and pregnancy
Shortly before Christmas 1966, Elvis proposed to Priscilla. Colonel Parker, Elvis's manager, encouraged him to marry by reminding him about his RCA "morals clause" within his record contract. Priscilla suggested in a 1973 interview with Ladies' Home Journal that she and Elvis were quite happy to just live together, but "at that time it wasn't nice for people to [just] live together". Accounts by Elvis's cook, Alberta, claim that he was so upset about the wedding that she caught him crying about it one day. When she asked why he did not just cancel the wedding if it upset him so much, he replied "I don't have a choice."  Marty Lacker, a close friend to Elvis, has also spoken about Elvis's reluctance to marry, while others such as Joe Esposito have asserted that Elvis was excited to marry Priscilla.In her book, Elvis and Me, Priscilla describes Presley as a very passionate man who was not overtly sexual towards her. According to her account, the singer told her that they had to wait until they were married before having intercourse. He said, "I'm not saying we can't do other things. It's just the actual encounter. I want to save it." Priscilla says in her autobiography that she was a virgin and she and Elvis did not have sex until their wedding night. However, this claim is questioned by biographer Suzanne Finstad.The couple married on May 1, 1967, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The wedding, arranged by Parker to maximize publicity, featured very few guests and was over in only eight minutes. It was followed by a quick press conference and a $10,000 breakfast reception, attended by friends, family, and business associates from MGM, RCA, and the William Morris Agency. The wedding caused rifts between Elvis and several of his closest friends who were not invited to the actual wedding ceremony. Red West, especially, was furious about the situation. He and his wife had been personally invited by Elvis to Las Vegas for the wedding, had dressed for the occasion, and at the last minute were told that they would not be present. For Red, who had been with Elvis since the beginning of his rise to fame and had given Elvis the role of best man at his own wedding, this was enough of an insult that he decided to quit his job working for Elvis. Many other friends of Elvis were also disappointed and held resentment towards him for many years to follow, although they mainly blamed Parker for their exclusion rather than Elvis himself.Following the reception, Elvis and Priscilla boarded a private jet and enjoyed a short honeymoon in Palm Springs. On May 4, they flew back to Memphis and retreated to their private ranch, just over the Mississippi state line, for a three-week break. Many of Elvis' inner circle joined them, although for the most part the couple were left alone and were able to enjoy each other's company without the intrusion of the Memphis Mafia. "I loved playing house," she later remarked; adding, "Here was an opportunity to take care of him myself. No maids or housekeepers to pamper us."  In an attempt to heal rifts, Elvis and Priscilla held another reception at Graceland on May 29 for the friends and family who were unable to attend the original ceremonies.Soon after, Priscilla found out that she was pregnant. She was upset at such an early pregnancy, certain that it would destroy the closeness she had finally found with Elvis. She had asked him earlier if she could take birth control pills, but Elvis had insisted they were not perfected yet. She considered abortion, and even discussed it with Elvis at one point, but both decided they could not live with themselves if they had gone through with it. Their only child, Lisa Marie, was born exactly nine months after their wedding, on February 1, 1968.Priscilla wrote in Elvis and Me that, around the time Elvis was filming Live a Little, Love a Little (1968), she began taking private dance lessons. She found herself deeply attracted to the instructor, known simply as Mark in the book, and she confesses to having a short affair. She implies regret, however, saying, "I came out of it realizing I needed much more out of my relationship with Elvis."Despite Priscilla's affair and Elvis's on-and-off relationships with his co-stars and leading ladies, the first few years they were married seemed a happy time for the couple. However, when Elvis's career took off again after his 1968 television special, he was constantly touring and playing in Las Vegas. Elvis had also been seeing other women on and off, often leaving Priscilla at home with Lisa Marie. Because Elvis was away so often, the marriage soured.
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