Your parents courtship

My mother was from York. She joined the Wrens and was stationed in London in the war.

She and her best pal were walking past the Regent Palace Hotel and mum noticed there was a dance on so persuaded her friend (who wasn’t keen) to go in with her.

There she met my father, a Canadian soldier whose family originated from Glasgow. He was twelve years her senior, previously married with a son. I gather it was a whirlwind romance and my sister was born in 1945.

After the war my father transferred to the British Army and ended up in the Royal Army Education Corps until his death at age 58 when I was 9 years old.

My two grandfathers (Bert & Sid) were pals during WW1. When Bert's son (my dad) had a short leave from the Army in 1939, Bert asked him to drop in on his old mate Sid to pay his respects. Sid's daughter (my mum) answered dad's knock at the front door. They married the following year. Love at first sight? Who knows? They divorced after 26 years anyway (she met someone she liked better, and I don't know whether that was l-a-f-s either. How quickly people fall in love seems kind of irrelevant when you know how the romance ended.

My parents both worked for the Post Office as counter clerks. My father sent her a Valentine in February 1949. I don't think she knew who it was from. I believe he proposed to her on their first date. They were married on December 31st that year and celebrated their 50th anniversary at the millenium. They loved each other very much although they didn't have much money and dad's health wasn't good. They had been married for 53 years when he died and mum lived on for another 13 years.

My mum met my dad at the street party following the late Queens Coronation in 1953 both aged 15. Married at 19 and had 64 happy years together.

My parents met at work and they got married in 1945. My mother was 25 and my father was 30. My maternal grandmother, made my mother's wedding dress which was knee length, pale blue velvet with a matching hat. All the family pooled their coupons. My great aunt, who was a professional baker made their cake.

My mother kept her wedding outfit and a box of decorations from the wedding cake.

They were married for 48 years. My mother died suddenly in 1993 at the age of 72.

My dad was in the RAF and met my mum during the war when he was on leave in S Africa from Rhodesia that was. He was stationed there to repair planes from N Africa. He discovered when he applied to the RAF that his eyesight was too poor to fly ! Thank goodness for I doubt he would have survived. My mum was a nurse in S Africa and she came to the UK after the war ( I think to continue the romance with my dad ) They married in 1949 and were together for 57 years . They had a good marriage.

😄 not getting any younger.
How times change!

Mum & Dad met at the dancing aged 16/18 in the 60s,dad proposed a month later, as he said they weren’t getting any younger 😂 anyway they married when mum turned 18. Just had their 60th wedding anniversary. 😊

I've an idea my mum's dress was hired, I know my dad's milk sodden suit was.

My mum and dad both worked at the same place. They married in 1940 and I have lovely wedding photos of them. She always used to say, so proudly, that she got married in a powder blue suit. And very smart it looks!

Ahh, do you think the second "go" was a more equal love match?

My mum came from a very large poor family ‘up North’. She escaped ‘down South’ and stayed with her sister. She got a job as a waitress at the factory where dad was an engineering apprentice. He was from a well-off family with a large detached house and an orchard. They married a year or so later. His family didn’t really approve and only two of mum’s sisters and her mother came to the wedding. I was born 9 months later. I think mum was enraptured by dad but sadly he started an affair when I was 11. It continued until he died at the age of 48 when I was 25. Mum remarried less than two years later to a man 12 years younger (only 10 years older than me) and they were together until she died in 1998.

Lovely.

A lady I knew worked in a pickling factory when young.

They had to put in, at the top of each jar, four pickled onions around a cauliflower floret.

Her beau was the boy who loaded the jars into the lorry.

My mother moved miles from home to be a Nanny and made friends with another young woman in the village.
The young woman's brother came home on leave from the Royal Navy and saw my mother in church. He sent a message via his sister to my mother to say he thought she looked very pretty, very nice. My mother sent a message back "Tell your brother not to be so cheeky!".
However, they got to know one another, got engaged but had to wait a long while to get married because my father was sent out to China and the Far East on his ship for nearly three years.
They got married when he came home again and were married for nearly 55 years.

Lyons corner.
Where the nippies used to work.

The residents in the homes I worked in spoke fondly of being nippies.

Oh!
They did, then, most definitely.

I've no idea, I wish I'd been a bit more nosy now. They met after the war, they were both 19 when the war broke out, my dad spent a lot of those war years in Libya. My mother lost a Canadian boyfriend during the war, she did tell me that. My parents lived opposite ends of London, his side of the family in Wimbledon and Mum's side moved from North London to Bromley where my grandparents had bought their first house, so no idea how they met, I think it would have been around 1946/47. I do have some photos of them on honeymoon in France, late 40s where a lot of my dad's extended family lived.

My mum did tell me that my grandparents met when they were both looking in a shop window, they got chatting and before long they were well on their way to making a date to meet up at Lyons Corner House/Kardomah or wherever people went for a hot date in 1919, hot as in a pot of tea hot and maybe a toasted tea cake Better way to meet than a dating app me thinks!

MissAdventure

grandMattie

I’ve no idea.
My father always said that when he was 6, he met my mother aged 2 by returning her shoes (she hated wearing them) to her and spent the rest of his life following her with her shoes in his hand…

Well, that's intriguing.
Did their parents know each other, do you think?

Their fathers were first cousins.

I remember my father saying he found out where my mother lived after spotting her at the local dance hall and kept riding his bike up and down the road outside her house hoping she’d notice him. She didn’t but her older sister did and agreed to play go-between so they could meet properly because my grandmother was very strict.

Years later he bought her the soundtrack to My Fair Lady and of course On the Street Where You Live became ‘their song.’

My Dad lived in Nottingham, and was on Demob leave (he was a soldier abroad during the war). Mum was from Hammersmith but was stationed in Nottingham, in the ATS. They met on a train, going to Nottingham, and met up a few days later - she took her friend with her - and went to the cinema. Mum & Dad carried on seeing each other, and eventually got married and set up home in Nottingham.

Grannybags

All I know is when my Granny found out my parents were dating she warned my Mum that "both he and his father drink you know"!

I think that's what appealed to my Mum after her sheltered upbringing. Before the war they used to tear around North Yorkshire on his massive motor bike!

That must have been a real taste of adventure.
No wonder she fell in love.

My dads mum disapproved because my mums mum was "no better than she should be".

And she was worried that my dad knew nothing about "the birds and bees," too.

My mum was sent down from Stockton on tees to work at Chivers jam factory in 1936 in Cambridgeshire. She met my dad at dance on a Friday night. Within nine months they were married. They were married for sixty years until she died in 1997 from dementia. Dad lived for another 10 years.
They were absolutely devoted to each other, they couldn't have children of their own and adopted my brother and myself.
They were the most loving parents any child could wish for.
I miss them both everyday.

All I know is when my Granny found out my parents were dating she warned my Mum that "both he and his father drink you know"!

I think that's what appealed to my Mum after her sheltered upbringing. Before the war they used to tear around North Yorkshire on his massive motor bike!

Oh wow!!
But yet she never moved on and met somebody new?

I'd love to know every detail of the whys and wherefores!!