Where did you go on your honeymoon?

Dad & I took off on our honeymoon after our ‘wedding breakfast’. We were married at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Bromley, Kent by the Minister there the Rev. Sidney Evans. This was the church which our famiy attended and where I had been part of youth groups as a teenager.

The wedding party, my Mum & Dad, my brother David and sister Sheila & husband David and their baby daughter Karen were joined by Jim’s Mum & Pop and brother Phil and his fiancee Jill and we all drove out to the Leicester Arms Hotel in Penshurst, Kent for lunch. The Minister and his wife joined us as was the custom, they got a free lunch! After lunch we drove off down as far as the Cathedral City of Salisbury and stayed at the Red Lion Hotel there.

I remember we had fish & chips for supper that night as we were both still felt so full from our huge lunch and the wedding cake - baked by Mum & iced by Auntie Sheila of course. The rest of the trip took us around Devon & Cornwall and we stayed at some lovely spots from Mousehole to Tintagel and explored various stately homes and beauty spots, all in the spring sunshine. We headed back up to Wolverhampton where Mum & Pop had a reception for us and for their friends to meet the ‘bride’.

My recollection of that is of lots of people whom I hadn’t a clue who they were or where they fitted into the scheme of things,and of lots of wedding gifts of stainless steel trays, very popular back then. The kind donors felt a tray would be nice and flat to go back to Canada in a suitcases. I remember one morning scurrying around stores in Wolverhampton returning the large majority of them. We did have 13 of them to say thank you for!

We then headed back south where my folks did the same thing for their friends, this time for them to meet the ‘groom’ - no doubt Dad felt just the same as I had in Wolverhampton. Then it was back to Canada to start our married life together, almost 45 years ago.