A reconstruction of our wedding (February 25th 1978)

We were married on a Saturday in February 1978 at the Roman Catholic church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Gateacre, south Liverpool. A small service with immediate family and friends. We were both utterly careless of convention: no elaborate outfits and no big arrangements afterwards. And no honeymoon - Clare went off to work the following Monday to the horror of her boss, who promptly gave her a holiday from the typing pool.

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In particular there were no photographs of the wedding itself. Which meant that we now have to reconstruct the event based on adjacent-in-time pictures (like the one below taken at my sister's wedding in October 1978) and a photo that was taken later at the reception from a very side angle. Clare and I worked hard today to nudge these pictures into the shape of our memories, and the results - we think - are not too bad. This is what I must have looked like (above).

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And this is our best guess for Clare's wedding day appearance, although she recalls a blue top for the actual ceremony.

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The wedding ceremony itself would have been very much like this, although the church geometry as depicted is wrong: it's shown as a traditional linear nave, although the actual church is more of a 'fan out' architecture with multiple aisles radiating to the sanctuary. Still, small matter perhaps.

Do we look like the Vances?

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This above is an actual contemporary photo of Clare and myself at my sister's wedding later in the year (October 1978) at which point I had lost the beard ('scratchy thing,' said Clare).

Even making allowances for the times (the late seventies) and the fact that I could never seem to get clothes which fit me, I'd have to say we deserved each other.

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Update: And then my sister discovered these two contemporary photos below - showing that very day of Saturday, February 25th 1978. 

The first shows the happy couple with my parents (Fred and Beryl Seel standing next to me on the left) along with Mag Youell, Clare's mother, standing next to her smiling.

The other shows Father Ring, the presiding priest, standing between us.

Notice the difference between our recollections top of this post and the evidence here of the day. Clare grew her hair over the next six months, and the photos we used for the ChatGPT reconstruction were based on the summer.

Also, Clare got married in Kerry's borrowed jacket and skirt (Kerry was her brother Francis's g/f at the time, and particularly glamorous) but changed back into the items we recollected for the reception.

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