A Short Engagement

The Knot is Tied

You will not want to hear about weeks of torment while Margaret made up her mind.

On March 10 1977, we went for a walk along Te Tii Beach and Margaret gave me the answer I had been waiting for. We immediately started planning for our wedding on 10 May. This only gave us two months but we decided we did not want to waste time, and the school holidays would give us time for a honeymoon trip.

Margaret got busy sewing her wedding dress, and we quickly lined up the key people for our wedding party, the venue and who to invite.

 

Nearly forty years later it seems amazing that we got it all done in time, but our family all co-operated, and on 10 May, six months after the episode with the cow, we tied the knot in Brooklands Park, New Plymouth, with the help of Margaret's brother-in-law, Rod, who performed the ceremony, and her sister Denise and my brother Stuart standing beside us as Matron of Honour and Best Man.

It was a glorious fine autumn day, with heavy dew on the grass. I remember Rod cleaning up my shoes before the ceremony.

The autumn colours in the park were staggeringly beautiful, as can be seen from the wedding photos.

After the ceremony we all went to La Scala restaurant for the breakfast. The MC was Jack Smith, with whom I had worked in Boys Brigade at Epsom Baptist Church many years before, and whose second wife, Hazel, had been a valued colleague in India. We borrowed a car from old friends and Terry did the driving. Margaret's Mum, Ruby, made and iced the cake.

Several senior members of our families were able to come; my mother, Mary, and her sister Wyn, along with Margaret's grandmother, Elsie, and aunt, Betty. Stuart and Catherine's two eldest sons, Andrew and Phillip, also came.

After the formalities we changed our clothes at Margaret's parents' flat and Stuart drove us down to the bus which we were catching to Hawera. The younger members of our families managed to give us a few handfuls of confetti, but we had hidden our car in Hawera, where we had booked a motel for a couple of nights, so we managed to evade their efforts.