Weddings of yesterday and today.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 💕

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.

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😄😄.

Register office wedding
summer 1969, 15 guests the majority parents friends. Ordinary White dress £3. No pub or village hall after, tea and sandwiches in parents back garden. Luckily a sunny day.
A matching dress and coat for going away outfit, had saved hard fir a week in Spain our first time on a plane. Thanks to Freddie Laker.
Wedding gifts I remember were tea towels, washing up bowl with brush, tea pot and cups and saucers.
About as simple as possible , even for those days and would have cost under £20.
That was 54 years ago, how times have changed,

People having children before marriage doesn't bother me which is good as 2 daughters have had that experience (1 twice) and 1 son has 2 sons and lives 'in sin' quite happily with their mother.

DD3 has a company which puts on wedding events - the people who exhibit at her shows are very varied.

In lots of ways they are an excuse for a huge party.

Grow stuff, the forthcoming wedding sounds lovely. Enjoy.

I prefer couples to wait until after the wedding before having children too. I was just 19, big white wedding, family and friends. Could write a book on life after that. Remarried to the love of my life eventually. I believe in marriage. That piece of paper is essential when things don’t work out. However it’s different times, party and holiday times, my grandchildren are appalled I married so young and had children, didn’t you miss the parties, the gigs, the holidays. No it was different times, if you left home it was to get married, that’s how it was. Look of horror. . Thirty is still young to them, in the future before they would ever consider a child, so much to do first before all that. Very different times.

We had a Quaker wedding in London in 1969. Not only was it the first Quaker wedding, but the first wedding I had ever been to. I was 20, DH 23.
There was tea and cakes in the hall afterwards and then a nice neighbour offered her bigger sitting room and garden for a champagne tea. DMiL made the cake. We were allowed 30 guests each! We made our own sandwiches
My sister's new boyfriend helped with the washing up, much to my DM's delight, and they were married the following year and still are!

We honeymooned in Cornwall and 50 years later we went back to Cornwall for our Golden Wedding, a year before he died
DHs family had come down from Scotland and I think they were somewhat disappointed that there wasn't a ceilidh.

3 of our 4 DC had far more traditional weddings with plenty of kilts. None of us had DC first. One DS hasn't married his partner of 20 years.

Good wishes to your DD for a happy day
Growstuff

growstuff

My daughter is getting married in two weeks. Thirty guests for a three course meal in a nice hotel outside Manchester. No hen or stag night and no evening party. My daughter is wearing a normal ivory dress (not an expensive wedding dress) and her mother (me) is making the cake.

growstuff
I hope you all have a wonderful day, which I’m sure you will. The cake will be delicious. Are you making a flavoured cake or a fruit cake?

Comparing "then" and "now" is really difficult.
I had what I thought was a really really lush wedding but looking at the photos maybe it was just fabulous for its time. It would cut much less mustard now!
Like others we had trestle tables with a white cloth over, flowers from the garden arranged by family, cake made by dad, all the dress alterations done by mum. I had my bouquet made by a florist but no professional hair/makeup etc. It felt very special and luxurious at the time - now it would look like quite an "ordinary" do!

The fabulous wedding my daughter-in-law-to-be is planning with our son is definitely a cut above ours!
Who are we to judge.

But, LRavenscroft, I've never been to a wedding where there was a choice of menu. I can't imagine how that would work if you were bringing (say) 100 meals out all at once.
May be OK if it's a small wedding and a large kitchen but logically is nigh on impossible if not...
Obviously there will still be "special diets" to make as well.

Would be interested to know if others had choices on the menu and still had a 3 course (or more) sit-down type wedding breakfast.

Kittylester - nobody I knew in the 70s had a foreign honeymoon. I was married in 77 and we couldn’t afford one. All my friends who married around the same time had small weddings, receptions in village halls and community centres and if they did get a honeymoon it was maybe the Norfolk Broads or a couple of nights in Skegness.

In the 80s my friend’s sister had a honeymoon on Rhodes and we thought it was very exciting even though we didn’t know where Rhodes was!

Our wedding was fairly typical of the era- 1970 - church with a lovely vicar, reception at a nice hotel, honeymoon in London and Rome.

Our children have had very different weddings. A trip to Vegas for DD3 For example.
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I married 40 years ago and my father organised nearly the whole thing. He organised the venue, food, car, photographer and flowers. I went with my Mum to choose a dress which he paid for but he gave me a budget. My SIL made the bridesmaids dresses, they were a disaster she decided to use hula hoops in the hems to make them stick out but when they sat down the front shot up.
We left the reception at about 6pm and went back to our new house where we had hardly any furniture. All the other guests went to my parents house and they had a great party until the early hours, we didn’t know this until the next day and felt a bit upset.
Saying that we had a great day, a lovely honeymoon to Austria then 40 years of very happy marriage.

We had a lovely wedding in my church in August 1989. Our reception was held in a village hall and we had caterers for the meal.
I have long thought that the amount of money spent on a wedding is very often in inverse proportion to the length of the marriage.

I got married in 1969 on a cold February day. My mother made my dress and also the two bridesmaid's dresses. My grandmother made me a two tier wedding cake, but paid a friend of hers who was a professional cake decorator to ice it.
It was at 2pm and my father, who had started celebrating at 9am was two sheets to the wind by then, so it was more a case of me leading him down the aisle to prevent him falling on his face.
We had a small reception in the function room in a local pub afterwards
We stayed together for nearly 51 years until my husband passed away. Our younger son does to believe in big expensive weddings, which is just as well as he has been married and divorced twice.

I had my own lovely flat before our wedding and we asked our guests (around 80) just to attend but no gifts. My Mum underwrote the catering, one special (and extremely talented) friend made my beautiful dress, another couple of close friends were madly keen to pay for our tiered cake and we paid for everything else without problem. A wonderful day was had by all and we lasted thirty years before my husband died very suddenly. Incidentally, I had many Baptist friends in attendance and they drank as much alcohol or soft as they wished without problem. All in all a very magical day for me and I wouldn't have changed a thing.

1977 wedding, January. Hired wedding dress and veil, but brand new stock. Bought new whit shoes and had small bouquet of fresias. Small church wedding, no bridesmaids. Reception in community centre. Cousin was a chef so he did the food which was lovely. Mum made wedding cake and lady in village iced it.

Our wedding photos look like Wuthering Heights, as it was January it was cold and windy and we had them taken on a hill,overlooking the sea and a storm was brewing so the sky was navy blue! It was a lovely, happy day though.

We couldn’t afford a honeymoon so went back to our rented cottage and didn’t owe anybody anything. My son’s friend had a massive expensive wedding and it took him years to pay off. Another friend’s daughter had a very expensive one too and split up within the year!

We got married in February 1965. I bought my wedding dress from C&A, it was £10, my Mum made the bridesmaids’ dresses. My parents paid for a meal for family and friends at a local pub, I think their budget was £50 and they paid for the wedding cake, my husband paid for the flowers and my father paid for the wedding car. We left after the reception to travel to London on the train and we were there for three days, it was freezing! I didn’t have a hen do and my husband didn’t have a stag do, I don’t think anybody did then. I don’t understand the huge sums of money spent on weddings these days, a friend of mine really went to town on her daughter’s wedding and she was divorced within two years.