Weddings now and then …

My son got married last weekend, and it was, in many ways, a very modern wedding. There was a live stream so that family and friends from far away could joined virtually. The invitations? Not carefully handwritten cards tucked into envelopes, but a nice colourful website with all the details. Guests could upload their photos to a shared online album, and there were digital games to keep people entertained. It was all very efficient, very connected, and, I must say, a lot of fun.

It made me think back to my own wedding in 1984. Our “wedding website” was a carefully typed list of addresses for the invitations, produced on a manual typewriter which is still one of my prize possessions!  If you made a mistake, there was no delete button, just Tipp-Ex and hope. The wedding present list was also typed and then copied, with carbon paper no less, for the relatives who wanted one (did you know that cc in an email stands for carbon copy?)

And yet, despite the decades and the technology gap, both weddings had exactly the same ingredients: joy, laughter, nervous speeches, and far too much cake. The music may have changed, the photographs may now appear instantly on everyone’s phone rather than months later in an album, but the feeling in the room was identical.

Of course, weddings are always a little unpredictable—something will run late, a speech will go off-script, or the band will play the wrong song. But John & Rachael’s had a twist that no one saw coming. In total secrecy, the couple had slipped away to Denmark and got married beforehand, thanks to the joys of German red tape (an expression for bureaucracy), which found endless complications in the small matter of my daughter-in-law being British and changing her name a few years ago.

So, two weddings: one in the 1980s with a typewriter, Tipp-Ex, and carbon paper; one in the 2020s with a website, live stream, and cloud storage. Both were wonderful, both full of love, and both unforgettable. Technology changes, but weddings—thank goodness—remain timelessly joyous, romantic and just a little bit unpredictable.