Weddings of yesterday and today.

I love weddings! I loved all our family weddings - the first I can remember was my Aunts who married an army officer and then flew directly to Egypt - honeymooned in an army tent. Our latest family member - my nephew’s marriage was held in a barn on a farm with rides for the children attending, farm animals looking on and Italian food with an evening Ho-down. Huge fun.

And everything in-between, from very posh - to - much more simple I love them all.

Ours was very traditional church wedding with reception for what seemed a lot of people to us dashing off early for the plane at Gatwick and missing all the subsequent fun. Although we had fun too😄😄.

As for people having children before marrying, the age of marriage is much later than in our day so women are well into their 30 s before marrying where we were much younger , often teenagers.

My first wedding took place at a beautiful country church in Michigan. My ex-husband had been seconded there by General Motors so marrying him gave us the year together. I wore my sister's wedding dress and the reception was catered by other GM wives from England and held at our apartment. No family attended; my DDad wanted to visit but DM refused to fly. 🙁

After 43 years, we divorced (amicably) and, in 2015, I married olddudders at Cockington Register Office. We met through Friends Reunited, having attended the same school in Dorking in the Sixties. Our buffet reception for about 40 guests, was held at a nearby pub. I wore an outfit from Monsoon which I’d bought for my DD1’s wedding in 2003. Two days later, we hosted another party at the amdram theatre to which I belong, for other local friends.

Neither wedding cost a great deal but suited the circumstances of the time. Huge expenditure on the wedding day does not necessarily equate to greater happiness in the years ahead. 💕

Considering the price of wedding gowns nowadays, it’s a shame so many brides look awful in them.

So often they are wearing the dress of their dreams, but it just doesn’t suit them.

Low cut, with cleavage spilling out, corseted up showing rolls of fat, off the shoulder revealing hefty upper arms……

All for a few hours of wear, then stuck in a box at the back of a wardrobe.

I do agree about the ludicrous cost of dresses often very revealing which will only be worn once. My dd had a second hand one but it was still a lot of money . I still have my dress (modest, long sleeve /high neck)in a small box in the drawer under my bed. Wish I could squeeze into it.
Was told in Germany they have bridal dances where people go in their wedding outfits which means they get more than one outing, I think it’s a rather lovely idea.

I still have my wedding dress somewhere which is short, pale pink with white spots. DH wore a matching pink tie, a light green wool suit and he wore desert boots. I think my DM was rather shocked. We thought we looked like Neapolitan ice-cream.

silverlining48 - I expect many of us thought the cost of our own wedding dress was outrageous.
I know I was surprised at how expensive the ones I liked were.
The more I liked them the more they cost!
Like others I compromised- but the prices were shocking even then.

At my daughter's wedding in Norway many guests wore traditional Norwegian outfits- many of which they had worn as their own wedding outfit. Beautiful, timeless and a reflection of the other happy marriages at the celebrations of the newest one.

First wedding 1972, aged 19, 2 friends as witnesses,borrowed coat,no family attended,He,being a west ham supporter went to a football match,west Ham v Ipswich straight after,my friend and I went to the Golden Egg for lunch,and the library so I could see my name changed.We went to the pub in the evening,I think he celebrated West Ham winning,more than the marriage,we lastèd two years.
Number 2, 1977,we saved and had enough furniture and every thing needed for a home,my long blue dress was £10 from Bodgers in Ilford,sandals I had already,a floppy hat 99p from a shop selling alsorts of stuff,but went with the dress.
We lived 30 miles apart and a complicated arrangement with taxis took us back to stay at his mums for a few weeks,we had ordered fish and chips to be delivered for all 10 of us there,it was August bank holiday we both went back to work tuesday.
We are still married,but separated 20 years ago,he has been with a new partner all of this time,my 16 year relationship with my partner ended 5 years ago,I am friends, with both of them.

Our wedding was on the 23rd December. Clever combination of best man and bandleader turned it from conventional dance to Christmas party after we stopped for a tea break around eight in the evening. Quite a magical surprise and so well thought out by the scheming pair.

Oh, and my dress was an eighties meringue, which I still have, but I loved it and still do. It was fairly plain at the front with frilld on the short sleeves and neckline and had a fitted waist (l had a 25" waist then) and frills on the bottom half at the back of the dress falling into a train. I still have my satin shoes, too, and Laura Ashley going away outfit. I would be lucky to get my big toe in those clothes now! 🙄

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202306/medium-408111-img-1303.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202306/medium-773749-img-1305.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202306/medium-833366-img-1304.jpeg

Here is my dress. Just a very classic design really, longish train.

whoops 😄😄😄

Ours was 1969, Birmingham Register Office. Both sets of parents were poor so we scraped the money together ourselves. I wore a pink dress, £11 from Rackhams.
DH's mother was due to hold a small reception for us but fell out with us the day before the wedding and refused to do it. (She didn't like me. I was too quiet apparently). So we had to go to my parents small front room for sandwiches and party 7cans of beer etc.
Mother-in-law told the rest of DH's family that I had upset her and they didn't come to the wedding and withheld their gifts. DH's lovely dad. defied her and turned up for the service as did his older sister. I think we had about 10 guests in all. Still married 54 years later.

We got married in 1974. We were married in our local United Reformed church by the minister who knew us as we grew up. I had just finished teacher training and my husband was about to embark on his post grad course, so of course we had absolutely no money except what we had made in holiday jobs. I paid for my dress and bridesmaids dress out of the childhood savings I had. My Godmother made my dress. It was a Jean Muir design and I loved it. I chose cream crepe and wore a lovely hat to complement it. My chief bridesmaid made the bridesmaid dresses. I did my own hair and make up. My parents paid for the reception in a room above a pub. My mother made the wedding cake and a neighbour iced it. She coloured the icing with coffee to make it match the dress. We honeymooned in Cornwall and Kent. We had a little tent and went to Cornwall but it rained all the time and so we drove across to Kent where the sun was shining. We certainly couldn’t have afforded a foreign holiday, we couldn’t even afford a hotel for our honeymoon.
We will have been married for fifty years next year and we’ve booked a cruise to the Galapagos to celebrate.

At least it seems we didn’t land ourselves with lots of debt to repay over the following years.

I don’t think there were such things as credit cards in general use in the 60s were there?

Debt didn’t really exist I think unless you had fallen on hard times. We have never had a single bit of debt except the mortgage.

Different days - different ways I suppose.

Actually thinking about it there was Hire Purchase for large items - I guess that interest was paid on the debt?

I had no choice but to use hire purchase at the beginning of our marriage. Every single scrap of our furniture was second hand, apart from the cooker which was a wedding present from my parents in law. We were given a twin tub which I used on Saturdays as I was working all week. It leaked all over the floor and I was standing in an inch of water whilst I washed. I used this defective machine for three weeks and then my best friend and her husband came for the weekend. She immediately said oh my God, you can’t keep doing this, you need a new washer. My husband objected as he didn’t want to take out credit, but my friend argued on my behalf, and so we went to an electrical shop that afternoon and bought a washing machine on hire purchase. My husband had to sign to allow me to take out the credit as women weren’t allowed credit then. Different times indeed. It did annoy me as I was the one working because he was a post grad student. My experiences must have been very different than many of yours, but I never complained or thought I was poor, even though we were.

We got married in a register office with 30 guests and a reception in our garden with outside caterers. It was a glorious day in July and I was 5 months pregnant. I wasn't keen on getting married again and the pregnancy was a complete surprise and I was not young! The meal was lovely and the day was spent with family and close friends, I had a great time sharing our news as not many knew. We spent the night in the Cotswolds, with a walk up to Broadway Tower, OH had packed a picnic and I had a glass of chilled wine. A couple of days later we went to France with my daughter from my previous marriage and her best friend from school for three weeks. It's our anniversary soon and I still think it was the best wedding I've been to, but I'm biased!

No not so different maddy

Our bed was a present from one set of parents and our fridge from another. Everything else was second hand gifted from friends and relatives. I was also gifted a single tub washing machine with a mangle which lasted until babies and nappies came along and we had saved enough to buy a twin tub. Our home gradually came together room by room over the years. Happy days. Well happy now really, but we were so happy with so little.

It’s because none of us thought we were poor Whitewave even though we were. Second hand was normal then. We acquired our furniture bit by bit as you did. We kept our second hand dining table for, well I can’t remember exactly, but our children were born and quite old, teenagers probably.
My entire family’s children (nieces, nephews, and my own children) have bought houses, furnished them with new furniture, and had many foreign holidays before they got married in big and expensive ceremonies. Absolutely light years away from our experiences. But it is evident from reading on here that not all of us were quite as poor.

But what is obvious that unless of course you are dirt poor, homeless and hungry, happiness is not contingent on wealth.

Many people think it is and it certainly makes life more convenient, but not happier.

We’ve travelled all over the world on wonderful holidays, but you know when we had our touring caravan and we were spending time in the new forest in a field we were sat and said marks out of 10 where would you put the Maldives (we’d gone there that year) and now - sat in a field on our own enjoying the glorious countryside we gave them both the same - except more for the New Forest because the journey was so much better.

Wealth does not equate to happiness.

We were married in the hot summer of 1976. Engaged on 1 May and married on 29 May. OH was going to work in Seychelles for two years and we had to be married. My parents had a big garden and hired a marquee. Mum made the cake and a friend iced it. The food was prepared by a group of mum’s friends. We married in the Register Office in Henley. I bought my dress in Oxford - it was a Gina Fratini and I still have it somewhere. My wedding was the last time that the whole family was together.

I recently bought a new conservatory table and chairs as we now use it as a dining room and I needed a bigger one.
The perfectly good glass topped table and two matching chairs were offered to my GD’s friend who was moving into a flat with her two year old D having left her boy friend.
She prefers new on HP thank you.
Our generation, well most, would have welcomed it with open arms. Her flat is fully furnished and she now works two days a week and lives mostly on benefits.

I was married in the 1980s. I think the wedding of Charles and Diana was responsible for a boom in everything grand. Their ceremony must have quite literally advanced the wedding industry quicker than anything had over decades, and couples wanted to recreate it as much as possible. I remember there were so many bridal magazines with ideas. Florists, cake decorators and photographers must have started rubbing their hands. A lot of money started to be spent if you could afford it.
My husband was a chorister so we had some beautiful singing and organ playing, at a historic church in London. Our reception was at a London hotel and we honeymooned at a hotel in Place Vendôme, Paris.
Still happily married. ❤️ ❤️