For those of us who have taken the plunge… are you prepared to share your own experience of Your Big Day ???
Any dramas… any pre-wedding nerves… who made the dress … and the cake…
Anything you like to mention.
One memory which will never be forgotten by us:
It was after the main Reception and before the planned evening up the Pub… many came back to my parents’ house to continue celebrating…
The Best Man jabbed the needle of the cork-remover gadget into his hand instead of the cork… and pumped air into his bloodstream instead the bottle. He then calmly told us that he would be dead within minutes…
Uncle Fred grabbed the bottle saying (more or less)… can’t help you then, but we can save this good wine…Aunty Lea swiped at him for being so insensitive… Fred dropped said bottle, which smashed with glass everywhere…and wine spattered all over various wedding outfits…
It was not until all the glass etc was cleared-up that we realized that the Best Man was NOT dead, but instead was in another room, helping himself to my Dad’s brandy … and looking just a little shamefaced at the commotion he had caused.
Great, the Mayor was very kind and ignored the fact, that I had not a clue, about what was said to me during the ceremony, but I did manage to say yes in the right place, then off to a good restaurant in Rochefort en Terre for a good nosh, then a few days in a good Thalasso in 29.
I was a nervous wreck, in case I said the wrong thing, my best man came all the way from Whitehaven to 56 to do his bit. slightly_smiling_face:
Not our wedding but a good friend (of us both) who is a messianic Jew. We were invited to his wedding at a Methodist church and he telephoned us on the morning of the wedding to confirm that we would be coming. He informed us that he was shortly off to Heathrow to pick up the Rabbi who was flying in from the States. This had been arranged at short notice because the one that he had arranged had been ‘defrocked’ the day before…
Anyway, long story short - the poor Rabbi was so jet-lagged and so unused to the English version of the ceremony, he was just about to marry himself to the bride when the groom coughed discreetly and asked him to look again at the order of service.
Whilst this was going on, one family who were sat on the front pews (not sure they were ‘friends’ of either side to be honest) tucked into sandwiches and tea!
An experience not to be missed.
It was going to be a mixed marriage (she was a Man U fan), a week before the big day I told my parents I was making a mistake and wanted to call it off but was persuaded that it was just likely to be nerves. Kick-off was at 3 but I was still in the pub at 1.30, the best man finally managed to drag me out and we went home to get ready, my shaver broke so had to nip round my father’s to borrow his. Got to the church with ten minutes to spare, after the ceremony the vintage car we’d hired to travel the short distance to the reception broke down and we ended up walking.
We argued like anything on the honeymoon and the marriage lasted five years.
A few months later I met a single mum with four kids under 7 (see below).
Second Wedding (Kissimmee Courthouse 2002)
Despite the doubters the relationship worked and after a few years of living together we decided to get married but wanted a low key occasion, however OH’s father kicked up a fuss so we said sod everyone.
Without telling anyone we arranged to get married in Florida so at 8.30 in the morning just us and the kids turned up at the Courthouse to sign on the dotted line and say I do. We then drove to the coast for a picnic with champagne, the kids played up so we left straight after lunch and went ten-pin bowling followed by dinner at one of our favourite restaurants.
Back in the UK we had a big party for family and friends but FIL has never forgiven me for not being there to see his daughter get married.
We’re still together after 21 years as she is extremely tolerant.
Really low key. My wedding outfit was a peach dress and jacket bought in a sale that I could wear on other occasions. A pretty hat, that I still sometimes wear, registery office, 2 witnesses and the 4 of us for a pub lunch afterwards !
That evening we were sitting in our back garden when the neighbours from either side joined us for an impromptu drink, back then we brewed our own !
Honeymoon was some months later when we found a good deal at a hotel in Spain !
Oh and the wedding photos were taken in a studio, just the two of us a week before the wedding.
Even lower key than Anne’s. Basically we eloped after 25 years together. Ran off to Barnstaple (we lived in London) to get married in a registry office when we were supposedly having a weekend visiting friends down there. And had a cream tea on the beach after with our two friends. No special clothes or anything, although I do remember I painted my nails in the car on the way down there…Unfortunately it was pre-digital camera and our friends lost the film.
Told our parents after the event, and unfortunately they let slip to the children before we got round to telling them…
I met my ex husband who was already an ex husband with two daughters at 18…,he was 10 years older than me…we didn’t get married until after our second daughter was born 8 years later…our son was waiting in the wings for another 5 years but we split up when he was around two years old…Our wedding was at a registry office…my 2 stepdaughters were my bridesmaids…I bought a long cream dress from a sale in selfridges and chopped the bottom off to make it really short and sewed on lots of tiny lilac roses and diamentes…and made a sash with a bow at the back from some lilac satin…I made all the buttonholes and my own headdress from fresh flowers and did the same for my bridesmaids…My dad gave me away after a huge lecture about how it wasn’t really possible for him to give me away when I had already gone and already had two children out of wedlock…my Mom softened his outlook and therefore made it easier for my younger sister to get married whilst pregnant with her first little one…,Afterwards we all piled into a local pub/restaurant and the food was delicious especially the death by chocolate…We separated 7 years later and I met the man who I have now been with for 21 years who is 13 years older than me although we have never married…My ex husbands next woman burnt all our wedding photos and our marriage certificate…(they separated not long after) and his next woman who I considered a friend turned out to be viscious and caused so much collateral damage that our extended family’s children step children half sisters half brothers still struggle today with maintaining an even keel…especially my first born…they too separated not long after…) In a way I feel burning the photos and marriage certificate was out of order but my Mom still has the original photos under her bed should any of us ever wish to look at them…It’s not been a bed of roses lilac or otherwise but I’ll never regret meeting my ex husband as without him I wouldn’t have my 3 gorgeous kids and 4 grandkids and because of them I feel eternally blessed …x
We had a do it yourself wedding. I knitted my own long dress and head dress, we had the reception at home with a wonderful buffet with a Lune salmon and a turkey and gammon. Loads of salads and trifle and fruit salad for dessert. My mother made the three tier rich fruit cake and it was iced by a friend.
I was driven to the church in my cousin’s car.
It was Easter Saturday and the church was decorated by the parish.
Our honeymoon was three days in the Cotswolds.
We are still married and happy together after forty three years.
My first wedding was ages ago and on April 1st ( I should have known better ! ) My then husband was a member of the Southampton All Stars band, and on our wedding day, as we left Eastleigh airport ( it was then very small) for our honeymoon in Majorca, the rest of the band all lined up on the tarmac and played " whose sorry now ?" I did laugh at the time.
Similar to Jane Jones - No fuss, no panic or stress as we didn’t tell anyone beforehand, just invited friends for a long weekend and asked them to be our witnesses when we arrived at the registry office (they had thought we were going on a bus tour that day). Pub lunch later to celebrate - lovely day and then told family and friends afterwards… highly recommend it.
Hi, loved reading those wedding stories
Met and married Michel in Birmingham uk. Married in England, 45 french people came over on a coach!
Good fun on te ferry apparently lol.
They came from the Ardennes with crates of champagne in boot of the coach.
Mil had put eau de vie I into limonade bottles, which were put on a table with champers. My dad thought it was real lemonade and consequently began to serve to the children there!!! Fortunately the French noticed in time ! Lol lol
We had paid for hotel rooms and continental breakfasts, the french asked for the full English breakfast, which the hotel willingly served! Putting an extra 300 pounds onto our bill!!! A lot of money in 1983 lol lol
They loved the English traditions, they loved the atmosphere and the people, we made front page news in the local paper lol lol.
My sister made my wedding dress, which is very similar to Catherine’s wedding dress 30 odd years later bless my departed sister:heart:
The French family 35 years later still talk of our wedding week end !
3 lads and 2 grandchildren later we are still together through a lot of thick and thin lol lol
When th champagne was served the waiters shook the bottles before opening !!! The French went nooo noooo , the English cheered like in the Grand Prix!!! French family have still not forgiven the English for this lol lol. Could have been ww3 beginning lol
Hugs
After 7 years in France my English wife decided to return to the UK…a month later I met ma petite Jocelyne and now we have been together for 11 years. We got married in 2013. After the mayor had recited the part of the marriage ceremony going on about the importance of bringing any future offspring as good French citizens I told him that as I had had a vasectomy and my wife had passed the menopause, any children would be an absolute miracle !!!
I explain to would-be happy couples, that the official wording must remain the same for all weddings, regardless of whether or not it makes sense at the time… as in your case, there’s nearly always some bit of it that has folk chuckling…
Weddings are times of great joy and your photo captures that ! Glorious…
Married my Flo 11 years ago - in Salzburg, Austria!
What a performance THAT was to arrange… As Flo is French, I had to have a medical in France to prove my health to marry a French flower. Then, because the ceremony would be in Austria, both Flo and I had to have all manner of paperwork, from both the UK and France, copied and certified translated into German and sent to the Austrian authorities. Our wedding took place at the Mirabel Palace in a beautiful marble hall.
Why Austria? Well, Flo and I first met at a campsite in Salzburg in 1977 when we were just kids. Just a Brit family and a French family enjoying their holidays and us kids all getting along and making friends. The two families remained friends ever since, but Flo and I lost touch with each other until 2004 when we met up again in Oxford. Things just seemed to fall into place and we decided that we should get married in the place where we first met - and it just happened to be almost 30 years to the day since that first meeting! To top it all off, our reception was held in the restaurant of that same campsite - with the same family running it as were running it in 1977!!!
Loving these stories so much…making me feel that after my first divorce (3 kids and 4 grandkids) and now 21 years into a second as yet unmarried relationship I could maybe look at it again…seems we could get married in either U.K. or France…but both requiring long lost documents not so easy to obtain…decree nisi decree absolute for both of us…burnt marriage certificates…for my partner having to obtain a duplicate of the document that changed his surname to that of his mom’s second husband at a time when divorce was frowned upon…almost unheard of with the added complication his mom is now suffering a rapid decline from Alzheimer’s…probably not insurmountable obstacles but nonetheless daunting…
you must surely have an anecdote or two you can share with us… please…
apparently lol.
bless my departed sister:heart:
