My wedding diary

On the bowling green at Lostock Club for
our wedding photos

Friday, November 2nd was my 38th wedding anniversary.

The wedding took place at Northwich Register Office on Saturday, November 2, of Mr Eric Thomas Rayner of 339 Manchester Road, Lostock Gralam, son of Mr Eric Rayner and the late Mrs Nellie Rayner and Miss Margaret Burrows of 28 Beech Hayes Drive, Weaverham, daughter of Mr and Mrs Norman Burrows.

Witnesses were Mr Robert Broomfield and Miss Susan Astles. The bride wore a white crepe dress with black and white silk jacket. A reception was held at Lostock ICI Social Club and the couple left for honeymoon in London.

That would have been the rather formal, stylised report in the Northwich Guardian the following Wednesday. That was when local newspapers were true publications of record. You hadn’t been born, got married or died in Northwich unless it was in the Guardian and the Chronicle. I’d written a fair few of those reports myself in the three years I’d been working at the Guardian, but by the time I was married I’d graduated to the giddy heights of court and council and weekly reports from Witton Albion in the Cheshire League.

On Saturday, November 2nd, 1974, I wasn’t covering Witton; I was waking up on my wedding day. It wasn’t a flashy wedding, we’d decided to get married in a register office rather than church. I think Margaret, who was a regular chapel goer, would have been embarrassed being the centre of attention in a big white dress and, at 21, I was a left-wing atheist who considered the church one of the institutions of repression of the working class. We’d planned the reception at Lostock Club, where I’d worked as a waiter and barman through the upper fifth, lower and upper sixth and they’d done me a mates-rates deal on the room and buffet. In fact I think Hilda Hinde and Deanne Birkenhead, who ran the catering between themselves, had done it at cost. The cake was baked by Margaret’s mum and had been iced and decorated by a girl I knew in Lostock, who was serving her apprenticeship at Roberts bakery. I think she used our cake as her submitted work and she did a really good job - I hope she got an A.

For the photographs, I’d asked John Quigley, one of the Guardian photographers to come along and do some snaps. Like everyone else, he over-delivered and presented us with a full colour album and wouldn’t take anything for it.

We didn’t have wedding cars, I drove to the Register Office in our Mini, which had been ‘decorated’ the night before by our workmates. It was covered in squirty foam and had balloons tied onto the bumpers, so there was no doubt where I was going. Margaret was driven to the Church in her dad’s car - a Mk I Ford Capri. She didn’t have a bouquet, but before she left home, her dad cut her a rose from the garden.

Northwich Register Office is not a grand place. It was on the ground floor of a new office building by Dane Bridge. It had all been built in the 1960s as part of Northwich’s ‘modernisation’ and the room where ceremonies took place was literally an office. You could get maybe 12 people in there, so were were married with only our parents and witnesses present. Girls from the office and the supervisor, Mrs (Evelyn) Ward had come along to see Margaret’s dress and throw some confetti to annoy the council.

The ceremony didn’t last long and was essentially a declaration and signing the register. There were no readings or music.

I remember worrying that I’d be sick with nerves, but all day I was extremely calm, almost as if I was floating above and observing events. Margaret, on the other hand, looked very nervous and when I took her hand to place the ring on her finger, she was all cold and clammy. Her hands had swollen up and I could hardly get the ring on, we had to give it a jiggle to get it over her second joint.

I think we were married at 11am and all our guests were waiting at Lostock Club. We drove there, newly married, in the Mini but had to stop at Northwich Station on the way to pick up my friend John Whalley who had come from Manchester. All our guests, family and friends, were waiting for us at the club and it was photographs on the bowling green followed by a buffet - pies, sausage rolls and sandwiches. I think we had some champagne for a toast, I may have made a short speech to thank people for coming and for the gifts and we cut the cake. It sounds very sparse by the splendid ceremonies of Tom and Sam (with Max to come next year), but people would have considered it a fine spread and there was plenty of food and beer. My grandma was able to fill her shopping bag with leftovers, so she would have thought herself very well treated.

There was no dancing, although Lizzie had got hold of some champagne, quaffed a couple of glasses and was quite giddy. She was leaping off the stage and landing on the dancefloor with a huge crash and someone had to find Margaret’s mum to take her in hand.

We left around 2pm to drive to Crewe for the London train. Margaret’s brother Graham took us in his Triumph Vitesse - a bit more stylish than the Mini which I’d left for my dad to drive while we were away and his car was being repaired. When we got back from honeymoon, it was still covered in the dirty residue of shaving foam and some burst balloons tied to the bumpers and bonnet - he’d been driving it around all week in that state.

London was lovely. Our wedding day was cold and sunny; London was autumnal, sunny and warm. We stayed at the Henry VIII hotel near Lancaster Gate. It was Margaret’s first time in London, so we did all the tourist sights, Biba, a show and a film in Leicester Square (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot) and a lot of walking. The parks were beautiful and the crunching of leaves is an enduring memory for me.