52 Ancestors 2022 week 7 LOVE

I am using this as week 6 as it is the most appropriate subject as Wayne and I were married in week 6 of the year 1972 which was 50 years ago.

Be warned this is a long story but I felt that this would be a good place to record it on paper for the first time.

Wayne proposed to me in August 1971 while we were baby sitting my sisters children. We were in a high rise block of flats in Flemington in Victoria on about the 7th floor. Of course I said yes!

He then asked for my parents permission which was a nice gesture, both families thought we were a good match.

We became officially engaged in September on my birthday, when we celebrated with friends.

In preparation for our February wedding we had to keep in mind that my younger sister was to marry just 7 weeks before us.

We decided that we would be married in the little church that we attended in Mitcham Victoria, my sister had chosen that as well.

I started to get things together for my wedding dress, fabric, pattern etc and chose fabric for my brides maids, my sister who would by then be matron of honour, and a lovely young girl Rose one of the girls from the junior choir that I led.

I decided on a patterned fabric for them and liked it so much I bought enough to make myself a dress later.

Then my future mother in law found out who was to be bridesmaids and sent me a message that she was shocked I hadn’t picked one of his sisters and she was so upset that their family would not be represented in the wedding party.

Mind you Wayne’s younger brother was best man, so they were well represented. I gave in and chose his youngest sister. As a junior bridesmaid, that meant Wayne didn’t have to find an extra man as a partner, and we were trying to keep it small. I chose the younger sister as I would not have had sufficient fabric to make a dress for the older girl.

I soon realised that young sister did not want to be included at all and seemed to hate the idea. But by then it was too late. That was the end of the dress I intended to make myself later.

I think the next thing was early October. Someone set fire to the church and it burnt down to the ground. So another venue had to be found for both weddings, surprisingly it was not hard to do, and our wedding breakfast also had to change from casual as we originally intended to formal sit down as we had to get a new place for that as well.

We arranged the invitations with a printer, he had done my sisters and seemed good. To our shock when the invitations arrived friends were not being invited to my wedding where I would marry Wayne but to me being married to a person with a totally different name!  The printer very quickly got them sent back to him and he said he could not do correct ones as he now didn’t have the time! So we purchased newsagents ones and wrote the information in them, what a let down that was, I didn’t even keep one as a souvenir I was so upset.

Mum made the worlds best fruit cake and that’s what I wanted our cake to be, 3 tiers of mums fruit cake. We would keep the top tier for either our 1st anniversary or the birth of our 1st child .

Mum knew a lady who did cake decorating so with plenty of time took them to a country town so her friend could ice and decorate them.

The time came in the few days before the wedding to pick up the cakes, so coming back home but still on a country road a kangaroo jumped out in front of the car, dad braked hard and the top tier of the cake came from the back seat to the front and smashed! Mum and dad were fine the car and kangaroo were fine but the cake was not fine. They turned around when back to the decorator and she pushed it all back together and added more icing.   So the cake and my parents then travelled safely home. The cake looked great the lady did a great job.

On Thursday the 3rd of Feb I went to the hair dresser just to check the times she wanted us to arrive and get any last minute things ticked off. But the shop was shut! I asked at the shop next door what happened and was told oh she closed the shop as she is on her honeymoon in Tasmania and will be reopening on the 7th of February, but I had a booking for 4 for our wedding! The lady told me there was another hairdresser who may be able to fit us in, so I dashed to that shop explained what happened and yes they could fit us in but very early with another wedding that was just 2 people.

On that same day I took the clothes for myself and the bridesmaids to my parents home as that was where I would be leaving from.  Hung everything up and was assured after making certain nothing had been missed that everything would be fine for the Saturday.

Friday the 4th Wayne was at work delivering and installing a television, the house had stairs at the front and back so he had no choice but to carry a very large set up the front steps, he counted them before picking up the TV from the vehicle, all went well the set was installed, but part of his job was to bring their old TV back to the store room, in the early 70s televisions were either terribly small or very big and bulky pieces of furniture, this sets was the latter, he had no one to help him so he got a good grip and knowing he had counted the steps earlier he started down the stairs counting, what he didn’t realise was that he didn’t count the top step going up, so going down there was an extra step than what he thought, so while he thought he was on level ground there was one more step down! He put his foot forward but nothing was there so he started to fall but managed to not fall also held on tight to the TV he had in his hands, but his ankle did not do well at all, it swelled up and was very badly sprained. He was advised not to walk on it at all just keep your foot elevated for the weekend!

So on the Saturday he stood very very still in the church, as his shoe was very tight on his swollen foot and was not laced up.

So he hobbled beside me holding my hand very tightly, which I took as a sign of his happiness! But it was because he was unable to walk without assistance! We still hold hand when we walk together.

On the Saturday we arrived in plenty of time but as it came time to set my hair the power went out! Due to the heat the State Electricity Commision were doing rolling brown outs, and turning off the power to suburbs for an hour at a time, to conserve power, and prevent an overload blowout. So I had to leave the hairdresser without my hair properly set the way it was meant to be, my sister had to do a rescue of it but it was not how it was intended, my hair was down instead of being on top of my head! That meant I had to restyle my veil and head dress to fit a totally different style.

We quietly drove across to my parents house to dress while trying to work out what we could do about my hair.

I still had my clothing check list from Thursday so checked everything and thought good nothing was left behind, and I had checked at home the night before. The girls dressed and looked really nice. Mum had somehow organised some lunch for everyone, one thing I had forgotten! But when it came time for me to dress my lace jacket was missing, it was no where to be found and it has not been seen since and it took so long for me to make it, as the edges had to be hand sewn. And there was a lot of edge, mum looked in her fabric to see if there was something that could be used to quickly make a new jacket, but we could not find anything, and back then all the shops shut at midday on Saturday.

So I was stuck with a wedding dress with short sleeves instead of a lace top the same style as my going away dress.

We were all ready mum and dad drove in dads car to the church as he was not walking me down the aisle, my older sister husband was, as dad was conducting the wedding service. He was a minister of a small church.

My Uncle arrived with his car decked out in white ribbon on the front to take us and we got going ok, but it was in the car that I found out that my brother in law was not wearing his dark suit but a brown one he had borrowed from my brother, and it was not a great fit. But he had put his suit into be dry cleaned and due to power shut offs the shop had shut locking everything inside. So he had to borrow my brothers, he was happy to just go with a shirt and tie as it was a very hot day. Although suits were traditionally worn at weddings back then.

We had to go across the side of the city and we were about 3rd in line to cross the paper mill railway line when the boom gates closed and the paper train slowly rolled across the road, about 20 trucks had passed and there were about 30 more to come, but we thought that’s ok we have time just won’t have to go round the block before stopping at the church, as we were now not going to arrive early.  Thinking we were fine was an error of judgement, as then the power went out and the train stopped running, as the SEC

Had turned the power of and it would be out for an hour unless someone acted fast. So we sat and waited the car had No aircon as not many did then. The only aircon were the windows and they were down and my extra bridesmaid was windging I’m hot I want to get out of the car, she was quickly told to sit still like everyone else and put up with it, I think if she had got out she may not have wanted to get back in, she was being a pain.

A few people from other cars were out walking around and came to say hello, and wish me luck for the future, then about 20 minutes later there was a noise the paper mill had got their generator power working and the train slowly finished crossing the road. We continued to the church arriving just as our pianist ran out of music to play, as we were late, but my uncle dashed it to tell everyone what happened on the way. But now our make up had almost run off, my hair looked straighter than it had before, generally the day was not going well!

Dad who was notorious for what is now called large bear hands, back then it was very large pauses, dad took one when he was going through the vows with Wayne and Wayne said I Do a sentence early. Which livened up the proceedings for those who noticed, as he then said I do in the correct place. Most other things with the wedding service went quite well and we even managed to record it on my reel to reel tape recorder. I was able to find that reel just a few weeks ago, so I am making a copy of it. With the help of a friend.

We noticed at the end of the wedding service that’s Waynes Aunty and Uncle were not there, we then got a message that his uncle had been rushed to hospital with leukaemia and was very close to death and could we visit him before we left on our honeymoon.

It just was not possible but we did go and see him on our return.

And I also saw my great Uncle before he passed away. We visited him on the same day we visited Waynes uncle. I had never met my Uncle Adam before then.

Waynes grandma turn out to be the original photo bomber she was in the background of every photo, our photographer was able to remove her from the ones she should not have been in.

My junior choir turned up to see the wedding resplendent in their uniforms and made a guard of honour for us to pass through on our way out of the church.

The road to Queensland was flooded and we could not get to where we were going and as we had no place to spend an extra night in NSW we decided the only thing to do was turn round and go home then see what else we could do, as not only were the roads flooded but they had been washed away.

So rather than being stuck in Sydney, we started home. Traffic was very heavy and moving slowly, as we rolled along with everyone else, then beside us appeared a blue light, it wash a mini police car , he booked us for speeding, we know he chose us as he said he saw that we had what was called a Ford Henry, a rather large round topped Ford, and were from Victoria. He even asked why we were in Sydney, Wayne told him we were on our honeymoon, so he said well this will make sure you don’t forget it, and gave Wayne Speeding fine, while cars, braked hard to slow down as they passed us.

The rain fell on the Saturday night and a storm raged on the Sunday. We learned from newspaper headlines that Myers Melbourne basement had been inundated with water and all stock was destroyed, so Melbourne had the same storm, after an extremely hot week of over 100 Fahrenheit.

The really sad thing that happened that was to do with our wedding was when we went to my parents place to collect my very big ginger cat , he decided right then that he would bolt out the door jump the back fence and take off, all efforts to find him failed, I never saw him again, but I hope someone took him in and cared about him.

On our first anniversary we decided to break open the sealed tin that had the top tier of the cake in it, well actually it turned out not to be there at all as all that was in the tin was a most terrible smell and gooey almost liquid mess.  It happened because the cake had been put back together and some icing was mixed with the cake and there were manny air pockets created by the reconstitution.

So we threw the tin and contents out and said well things are going just to form.

We wondered if this state of things would continue, when some friends heard how totally stood on its end our wedding had been they predicted our marriage would not last.

I think 50 years has proved them wrong.