Noisy church service with lots of guitars and songs; Mother, Favourite Aunt and I enjoyed a good sing; our husbands were resigned to silent horror or surreptitious eye-rolling. The service was a great deal shorter than the previous wedding ceremony in this part of the family (I’m afraid they were taking bets).
My cousin is training for the church (following his father and our mutual grandfather and great grandfather), so every other person we met seemed to be church of some sort.
We were given tea and tiny sandwiches while the photographs were taken outside church which we all thought was a great idea - and Pimms while we stood waiting to meet the bridal party at the bride’s home. The garden had been cut down over the previous year to allow the erection of a marquee for the occasion, so there were (small) fruit trees inside it and a considerable slope to the ‘room’. It was imaginatively decorated with bunting and place settings made from a mismatched collection of tea cups and saucers, a sale style label with our names and a little muslin bag of sweeties. The bride and her mother had made the chocolate coloured bridesmaid dresses with royal blue sashes, co-ordinated male accessories and the similarly co-ordinating bunting. The dress was an off the shoulder scoop-necked, drop-waisted and trained fitted frock in lovely cream lace: very pretty!
Supper was extremely good, and generously wined. The speeches were generally good with plenty of laughter in amongst the obligatory thank-yous. We were clearly too old for the disco’s music and decided to call it a day at around ten.
My Church Uncle and Aunt are unhappy with the groom and bride’s decision to opt for a hyphenated combination of their surnames. We are a largely female line of the family and there are only two ‘boys’ with the necessary surname left. One is so far unmarried and nearly didn’t attend for fear that everyone would say “Your turn next”, and the other has this weekend ‘abandoned’ the name. My Family-Historian Uncle was understanding, but provided a list of example family names where this had happened before (some with hyphens, some with as many as 4 names strung together). It may be conventional to take your husbands name, and it is certainly the simplest solution, but it is definitely not the fashion… I expect, as I type, a spray of spluttering about female identity, independence and general disagreement!
