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Self-Sufficiency in Style 

 a present for the bride

A memoir of the wedding of
Nicola and Daniel Gardiner

in Suffolk, England

September 7th 2002

“The kids around the kitchen table”

Steeple End 

- A wedding in a country town

This little memoir was written the day after the wedding.

It is a very special personal present for the bride

… but one to be shared with her mother and new mother-in-law, her grandmothers and aunts, her husband’s sisters and cousins, her bridesmaid and girlfriends

…in fact, all the ladies that made it a great day for me.

One day, I pray the bride may have the chance to share its sentiments with her own daughter.

We are all born into one, and most leave its closest confines to found another. This too comes to an end the day the last child marries.

The little close-knit family is a very special time of life that usually lasts anything from about twenty to forty years.

Even though the last child may have gone from the home, they still had a place always there, unspoken, unpromised, but always there. Any separation before marriage is temporary.

We were so lucky that our little family was to last for thirty-eight years. It has gradually become, in the natural order of things, a dispersed clan rather than a tight-knit group.

This is the last chapter of

The very last wedding of the generation, it is a time of special pride, of joy, of relief and of a very poignant sadness.

Just the two of us again - three chairs gone.

All of the clan seek to help and influence the decisions. All offer conflicting advice. All can be hurt and upset and are afraid that their genuine concern for their son or brother or future husband and wife be misunderstood.

The temperature rises in anticipation of a great event. Eyebrows are raised to heaven; frowns increase. The intensity of feeling becomes quite overpowering.

Quite rightly, the prospective bride and groom stand their ground and make their own decisions, even taking their prerogative to change them, as they see fit.

They too, God willing, will be founding just such a little group to last its span of a very few decades. They will live to experience and understand their parents’ feelings.

They too will have to face the emotion and conflicting desires when children yet unborn, leave the family home for the last time as single son or daughter.

Deep feelings and emotions are covered by the trifling worries about the colour of the bridesmaid’s dress and the length of the speeches.

It all gets worse, even overwhelming, as the day approaches.

There were no worries about the suitability of the couple or their love for one another, so it is strange that all the silly things seem important,

…but it is also always the small things too that stand in the memory and make the day quite special.

For me, the great moments all came with the ladies, and were quite unexpected and unanticipated.

The groom went via the White Lion -

not a pub any longer,

 but his sister's home and just across the way from the church

It was the look on my future daughter-in-law’s face that forced all the hidden feelings to the surface.

She stood before the altar, and looked at her man becoming, quite suddenly, absolutely radiant. There was even the suspicion of a suppressed giggle.

Her love shone from her face.

She was truly very beautiful.

It was a heart stopping, completely unforgettable, moment.

But just before the wedding, the skies cleared from the northwest with a band of summer-blue, the wind dropped and the sun came out.

The bride was able to forget the limousine and take a very un-English walk from the ancient coaching inn, past the little market square and around the big parish church.

They tell me that the shopkeepers came out with their customers to see such a rare event.

They approved, of course. Who indeed would not close the Saturday till, to see the happy face, glamorous dress and proud father pass by?

From the ancient coaching inn,

around the big parish church,

and past the cottages.

A pretty girl too, only fourteen, to create the next great moment.

Without notice, and with no previous experience of such a thing, she took the lectern and in clear and ringing tones read the lesson for her uncle’s wedding.

Those heart-rending words rang through the little church in a way that no outsider could ever have managed.

She later admitted that she was terrified. It did not show.

By chance, it was my wife’s favourite reading.

As the words

came from the altar, I alone knew exactly how my wife must have felt.

The time had finally come, not to lose her son, but to loosen the ties and to see another woman permanently love, care and look after him, worry about him and, yes, sometimes to scold him too.

It must have been that impossible crazy mixture of happiness, sadness and relief, and a real feeling of pride too.

“ the greatest of these is love”

Suddenly from the back of the church came the almost unaccompanied sounds of a female voice and the “Ave Maria.”

To say it was sensational would be to understate the effect. The lass, just 17, was apparently shaking with nerves, but it didn’t show, or if it did, it simply heightened the emotion. The voice reverberated through the church.

An ancient prayer sung in an almost forgotten tongue, still has the power to stir peoples’ feelings.

The bride’s mother was obviously overwhelmed and, quite rightly, showed it in a little tear.

Her close little family was beginning the process of turning into something looser and more complicated. She was seeing her daughter begin the familiar path, one that she had trodden too and knew so well.

We will leave the impact on the men that stood around the Registrar, but more than one, that you would not expect too, had a moist eye.

The groom’s two sisters made their marks with one predictably chattering to everyone in sight.

The other mostly sitting serenely and smilingly in the middle of her brood of hymn book distributors and part-time waiters.

Both must have found it a very special day. Big sisters are very protective of a younger brother. Their concern that he should marry the right girl was evident from the beginning.

That they approved his choice was obvious, but they too would have had that sense of loss and pride too, well covered by a show of joyful light-heartedness.

Indeed, all the lady guests were as cheerful and lively a bunch as you would wish to meet.

A vision in white, seated at a book-strewn table and slightly crowded between the front pew and altar, she caught her mother’s eye.

There was more than the suspicion of a little tear, but it was a tear of happiness, of thanks, and of a great gladness; a thank-you for more than two decades of love and affection.

She was radiant for the second time in two days

As they say, it is not so much losing a son, as gaining a daughter.

That all seems very fair to me today.

...good luck kids!

- from the inappropriately named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.