Weddings of yesterday and today.

I don’t like weddings, but we wanted to be married so we did as little as possible. Registry office, close family only and a handful of close friends, dinner in a good hotel in the evening. I did dress quite well, but not at all bridal. My husband was Australian, so his family was not there. Luckily their opinions in weddings were very like ours. There were only about a dozen of us altogether. This was in 1968. It was lovely!

Ours was reg office, 60 guests, marquee in my folks’ garden. My mother often told me I’d regret not having a ‘proper’ wedding (church) and not having a ‘proper’ white wedding dress, but I never have - it was a brilliant day - and a GM, bless her, said, ‘You couldn’t have found a prettier dress.’ Which wasn’t at all expensive.

Dd1, OTOH, had 190 odd, inc. a lot of children, at her big do in France, but that was only because we were lucky enough to have a lovely big venue - a chateau, no less - to use for free, courtesy of a relative of dh. A cousin had done the same a year previously.

Our wedding, 16 years ago cost £400, sit down Indian buffet for 40, charity Monsoon dress for me, new tie for MrJ, our local pub had a live band booked anyway.
A great day with my immediate family and our friends (we’d lived together for 7 years), one of the last few times my Mum was totally with it before dementia claimed her mind a couple of years later.

A friend, a professional dressmaker made my dress, I made the underskirt to go with it myself, our wedding cake, aided by my sister and she, I and DH did the catering for the reception, which we held in the parish hall of the church we attended and where we were married.

Three friends from the congregation set tables, put out the food and drink and cleared up afterwards.

In the evening, we went to a restaurant we had booked in advance with 12 members of our closest families, and after that DH and I left for a long week-end away.

This was possible on a very modest budget - if I remember correctly the most expensive thing was actually DH and his best man's suits.

Oh I agree with you there Whitewave. Money doesn’t make you happy, although it can certainly add to happiness. We always had enough and we were happy. I liked our life, but even then I was very aware that there were others, similar to us, who were more fortunate in that their parents were able to help them more, or they didn’t go into teaching which was notoriously badly paid. That’s why I was determined that my children would have better chances in life, and because my husband taught in an independent school, we were able to avail ourselves of reduced fees, so long as I worked to pay the rest, and the outcome speaks for itself. I will never feel in any way guilty for giving my children the best I could, even though it was hard.

Times are so different now. Married in 1977 and bought Pronupti wedding dress new for £50, church wedding, friend did photos, friend of family let us use the Rolls Royce, sit down buffet at local hotel, extra friends outdoors at parents home later on, friend made wedding cake, honeymoon in Isle of Man. Wish I hadn't bothered with any of it, divorce went through 18 years later.

I love a wedding , any type , simple or lavish , it's the bride and grooms choice . I've been a guest at lots and sometimes the simple less extravagant ones are the best .

It's a day to celebrate love and family and no one knows what's out before them .

I do feel disappointed though when family are overlooked for casual friendships and work colleagues, in 40 years time it will be your family still in your corner while so called friends have long since drifted away .

We had a church wedding , reception in the church hall , not elaborate but we loved every minute , we've been married 39 years this year .

@annsixty, while I am the first to advocate second hand goods, I think in this case your granddaughter’s friend was wise to refuse a glass table with a two year old. When my second son was not quite three he fell into my parents’ glass video cabinet in a freak accident. The glass shattered and my son needed nineteen stitches. He still has a scar on his cheek to this day rather like Action Man. To this day I dislike glass furniture. Better safe than sorry.

The thing that I think is a bit sad is that weddings seem to have lost the ‘family’ aspect.
They, at least in our tribe, are more about friends than family.
No children seems to be popular. This, of course means that if you don’t live near to the venue young families find it difficult to attend if they haven’t got babysitters on tap to do childminding.
My niece got married last year and luckily she had a different attitude, it was lovely for the whole family to get together. All the smaller cousins had a lovely time, were well behaved and didn’t ‘ruin’ the day.
Plenty of room for their friends too.

I think there's definitely something in that, Joseann. Remember how wedding shops up and down the country were all rushing to get copies of her dress out for sale. I think it definitely helped spark a boom in the wedding industry.

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. ❤️ ❤️

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

whoops 😄😄😄

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! 🙄