My postcard. Photo © Ricky Yates
One of the delightful features of Phillip and Lisa’s wedding were the individual touches they created that made every guest feel welcome. One of these was a named envelope, marking the place where each person was to sit at the reception, which contained an illustrated postcard with a personal message on the back.
Apparently, during her childhood, Lisa spent numerous holidays in Skegness, a traditional British seaside resort on the Lincolnshire coast. Phillip recreated his own version of a famous 1908 poster by the illustrator John Hassall (1868-1948), produced for the Great Northern Railway, declaring that ‘Skegness is SO bracing’.
Here is mine, declaring that Coventry, the city of my birth and the first eighteen years of my life is, ‘SO bracing’ 🙂 Whilst the artwork is a fairly accurate recreation of the original poster, it does contain a typical Phillip Yates addition of a squashed beer can on the beach 🙂
My inscribed beer glass © Ricky Yates
As well as my personal postcard, there was also a wrapped present from Phillip and Lisa, awaiting me at my place on the top table. It contained this inscribed beer glass, with the contraction of their names as ‘Phlisa’, which also appeared on their wedding invitations.
My postcard & inscribed beer glass, together with the EU flag © Ricky Yates
However, inside my beer glass was a further gift – an EU flag – emphasising my strong support for the ‘Remain’ cause, in the recent referendum. Apparently Hugh, Lisa’s father, also received an inscribed beer glass. Inside his beer glass was a Scottish flag, in recognition that, although of Irish heritage, he was actually born in Glasgow 🙂
I keep saying that the wedding couples of today puts down way too much effort on their wedding. So much that they sometimes has to postpone the wedding in order to make all the arrangements the way they have imagined it. They book one year ahead but often after booking dinner, singers and decorators. Once we get involved they have long lists of demands concerning rehearsals, number of bridesmaids walking in to what music and they pick impossible orchestrations of movie themes to present to our poor musicians, trained on Bach and Mendelssohn.
Your sons wedding however has a nice, sensible touch to it. They have done things with a good heart, simple but with a good deal of thought. Everybody can feel important and have a great time celebrating with the young ones!! And how lovely they look.
You have a son with a humorous twinkle in his eye and Lisa seem to match him well!! It must have been a marvellous party to follow that double-yes!! And, so that you don’t think of the Swedish church as legal savages, we do have a document that declares if there are any hindrance, such as close kinship or ongoing marriages elsewhere. They won’t get married without that document. So I can never ask that question….it’s a bit boring really, what if somebody actually pops up and starts to make objections?? Or that wouldn’t be British???
This Saturday I serve at two weddings, one with Queen music and one with Star Wars music, complete with violins and a very tired musician who really dreams of plain and simple choir practise, hymns and Bach’s Air. Soon the wedding season is over!!!
And I guess you are getting back to normal ministry , with this luminous occasion in grateful keeping.
Blessings to you!!!
Thank you, Solveig. I do know what you mean regarding some couples and the vast amount of time effort and money they spend on their weddings. All credit to Phillip & Lisa that they organised their wedding in just over six months without a horrendous amount of expenditure.
Regarding asking during the service whether ‘anyone present who knows a reason why these persons may not lawfully marry, to declare it now’, it does have to be a legal reason. A man standing up and saying that he fancies the bride, doesn’t count!
All the best for your two weddings on Saturday. I have one tomorrow too, as well as previously having a wedding on Saturday 6th August, a week after that of my son. Then one more in September.
What a fun sense of humour and delightful personal touches to include. Will you be flying your flag from your Prague 6 balcony? 🙂
I did briefly hang the flag over our balcony railings but decided I would need to affix it more firmly, otherwise it would end up in the pond in the garden of the ground floor flat 🙁 I still need to find a good place to hang it!
Glad you liked your gifts, its a Strongbow can (Lisa’s favourite cider) in the background.
I do like my gifts Phillip, and thank you for explaining the can on the beach.
Hi Ricky,
As a former hotel worker I heartily echo the comments of Solveig and Em with regard to ‘Phlisa The Wedding’ – sincere, warm-hearted, happy – a proper celebration by a young couple with their families and friends in a common sense and down to earth manner – it must have been a pleasure to cater to and ‘work’. My memories of many years of weddings in Irish hotels sadly bring to mind only very few such celebrations amidst hundreds of ridiculously expensive, flamboyant ‘keeping ten steps ahead of the Jones’s’ events. I hope in the future when wedding plans are being made by our children they will take a leaf from Phillip and Lisa’s book rather than the over the top productions we often see around our area.
Hi Sean,
As always, thank you for your kind words. Like you, I’ve also witnessed some wastefully expensive weddings so I did very much enjoy the way Phillip & Lisa organised and celebrated theirs.
What brilliantly personal mementos of the happy day. 🙂 Phil and Lisa’s wedding reminds me very much of the weddings our two chose to have as well as those of two of my sisters, all of which were very much home-made, with two receptions in church halls and one in the village hall. So much more fun.
They are brilliant personal mementos, Perpetua. Currently they are all still sitting on my desk but I really must find an appropriate place to hang my EU flag 🙂
I concur with you entirely – what you describe as ‘home-made’ weddings, are often much more fun than those organised by so-called professionals. Phillip & Lisa’s wedding was certainly great fun.