A few more photos of yesterday’s wedding. Click on any photo for detail.
Wedding flowers
The very happy couple
Sunset at Godrevy
Category Archives: Humanist ceremony
Wedding on the Beach
We have had the most beautiful day with friends on Godrevy Beach. Just one photo until tomorrow.
Rose petal confetti on the sand
Wedding, Water Lily and Wet Leaves
I conducted the loveliest Humanist Wedding Ceremony this morning, in a beautiful garden with Cornish mist mizzling and everyone smiling. It was personal and very moving and made even more special by the fact that a small group from The Suitcase Singers, one of the choirs I sing with, sang a number of most appropriate songs, chosen by the couple and beautifully arranged by our MD, Claire Ingleheart. Thank you to the singers who helped to make that a very special ceremony for everyone involved. Photos will follow later.
Two of our number invited us all back for lunch and that was really good too, to unwind with friends over a truly delicious meal and then to have a walk around their lovely and very productive garden. There was a Water Lily just opening on their pond. (Thank you, P and J, for the rhubarb!)
Water Lily
I love taking photos in the rain! I love how droplets collect and act as little magnifying glasses on the leaves. Do click on the photo and then zoom in – it’s like magic!
Water droplets
Humanist Wedding, Man on a Bike and Dessert
I loved my whole teaching career and when I retired I never dreamed that I would be so lucky to have this job of conducting special and unique Ceremonies for happy people! Today saw the Wedding Ceremony of a young Swedish couple and it was just lovely. They have promised to send me some photos that I can put on here but I did just manage to snatch one as they walked up the aisle together afterwards. It was a new experience for me to have the vows repeated in Swedish. All fifty guests had come over from Sweden for the event.
After the Ceremony
2 As we were waiting for the Ceremony to begin, I noticed a biker on the cliffs, balancing his bike on a boulder and making an intriguing silhouette.
Biker on the Headland, Newquay
3 I saw a board outside a hotel in Falmouth the other day saying – “Did you know that stressed backwards is desserts?” I decided that a dessert was on the cards today as the lovely Mr S has been battling a nasty virus for a week and I am struggling to beat it off so I decided that we both needed some quality comfort food. Rhubarb Butterscotch certainly fits that bill! If the photos tempt you, the recipe can be found here. Click on any photo for the caption.
Fresh eggs, from our friends’ chickens, one with double yolk
3 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup soft brown sugar with 2 dstspns flour mixed with the 2 eggs
Batter poured over the rhubarb
Cooked and ready to eat!
My heart goes out to all the people affected by the terrible earthquake in Nepal, such a beautiful country with beautiful and generous people. We bought a Shelterbox recently and I would be pleased to discover that our box is going out to help the people of Kathmandu.
Earth Day 2015, Seeds Sprouting and Planning
Today is World Earth Day and a friend sent me a quiz to see which animal I might have been. Turns out I would have been a Wooly Mammoth! “So unique, you’re technically extinct. But on the bright side, scientists hope to be able to clone you some day!” Do try the quiz (click on the red link) and let me know in the comments which animal you are!
On a more serious note, Earth Day aims to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth. Typical ways of observing Earth Day include planting trees, picking up litter, promoting recycling and conservation. It is also a day for reinforcing our call for stronger or immediate action to stop global warming and to reverse environmental destruction.
Make every day Earthday
World Earth Day
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. Native American saying
To mark the day, I have spent the morning in the garden, tending our little bit of the Earth and admiring the blowsy tulips. I am delighted to see my flower seeds sprouting. The strongest ones are the Cornflowers.
Sprouting flower seeds
White tulips
This afternoon, I have met a young couple to finalise their Wedding Ceremony which I am performing for them on Saturday. What a privilege it is to spend time with happy, loving people who are about to embark on the rest of their life together. Every one of these Ceremonies that I do is unique to the couple and as such, is especially moving and significant. This one will be in English and Swedish!
Humanist Ceremony, Daymer Bay and Happiness
What a beautiful day I have had! The sun shone and the air was warm and I went to stunning Daymer Bay to conduct a Humanist Ceremony of Re-affirming Wedding Vows on the cliffs and it was just brilliant! The lovely couple had been married for 6009 days today and it was his birthday.
As a surprise, she had organised friends and family to be on the cliffs and it was just the loveliest, happiest ceremony that brought tears to many an eye. It included a Hand-fasting which I have not done before and many readings done by family and friends, one of the most moving poems being written and read by their lovely daughter. It was so very special and I have permission to share these photos with you. Click on any photo for the caption and detail.
L’s bouquet in my favourite colours
About to go under the confetti arch
Nearly through and everyone very happy
The Hand-fasting ribbons
Cornish Violets growing on the cliff at the Ceremony spot
The Wedding party
Confetti
The view when walking back to my car afterwards
Wedding Plans, Poem and Spring Flowers
I spent a delightful morning beginning to plan a Humanist Wedding Ceremony for July with a lovely couple today. I really love this very happy job!
This poem, High Flight, is one of Mr S’s favourites having found it some years ago. It was written by John Magee, Poet and Soldier, 1922–1941. In his seventh flight in a Spitfire Mk I, he had flown up to 33,000 feet. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck by words he had read in another poem — “To touch the face of God.” He completed his verse soon after landing. It never fails to move both of us and you can truly imagine the feelings of freedom as he ‘chased the shouting wind along’
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
Spring is showing in various parts of the garden – crocuses in the little herb wall, little Tète à Tète daffodils in the Monkey planter made for me by a local artist, Jeremy Beswick, and Snowdrops close to the house.
Crocuses
Copper monkey planter
Snowdrop
Boat Jumble, Humanist Wedding and Simple Supper
1 We went to the annual Boat Jumble today and I found a beautiful terracotta wash basin with a painted rim. We understand it came from a boat and would love to know more if any reader can help.
Decorated boat basin
2 I conducted a Humanist Wedding today with torrential rain outside and the sunniest of smiles inside the marquee. It was, as always, a beautifully simple event, unique to the couple involved. Click on any photo in the gallery to see detail.
Welcome
A Wedding in the field
View from the field – the sea at St Ives
Wedding arch and hay bales
The Beautiful Bride
Cheese biscuits served with the Champagne
My Wedding umbrella
Ready for the reception
3 A simple supper was called for tonight – a delicious Asparagus, Pea and Lemon Risotto. We didn’t have any white wine so I used a splash of red instead and it was truly scrumptious.
Simple supper
Weekly Photo Challenge: Object – The Family Locket
Every day, I write about beautiful things. Today, for the Weekly Photo Challenge, I’m writing about one of my very special and favourite objects – The Family Locket. This has been in the family, on my Mother’s side for at least 154 years and is now entrusted to my care.
My Great Great Granny’s Locket
We know very little about my Great Great Grandmother, whose locket this was, apart from the fact that she was Spanish and we think the locket probably is too. The front of the locket is particularly beautiful, the silver being inlaid with a black stone, maybe jet.The back is covered in very delicate engraving. My Mum attributed the fact that her hair never went grey to her Spanish genes!
The front of the locket
Inside the locket are two tiny photographs, one of my Great Great Grandmother and the other of my Great Great Grandfather, the only photo we have of him.
Inside the locket
My Spanish Great Great Grandmother and her Husband
In the photograph, taken we assume sometime around 1860, she is wearing the locket and just look at his wonderful moustache! We treasure her studio portrait in its original card frame.
Studio portrait c 1860
We have a photo of my Great Granny and Grandad but not wearing the locket and we don’t know if it was worn by the Bride at that wedding.
My Great Grandparents
I am told that my Granny, whom I was lucky enough to know well – she taught me to knit, to crochet and to play cards, though never on a Sunday! – wore the locket at her wedding on 27th April 1882 but I don’t have a photograph of that wedding. I do have a photograph of Granny and sometimes, when I pass a mirror, I fleetingly catch her image. I remember her as always smiling and I’m told I do that too!
My Granny
My Mum, married on 2nd September 1939, by her Father, The Very Reverend William Richards, the day before the Second World War was declared, wore the locket at her wedding but their honeymoon, planned to be in Paris, was a few snatched days in Blackpool instead. The photo isn’t very clear but the chain and shape can just be made out in this photo.
My Mum at her Wedding in front of Cockerham Vicarage, Lancashire
I, too, wore the locket at my wedding in Truro, Cornwall almost 30 years later in 1967.
I wore it at our Wedding August 1967
KJ, our second daughter, wore the locket at her wedding in London July 2006. KJ also has Granny’s grin!
KJ at her wedding
When my Brother and Sister-in-law were married in June 1993 in the Chapel at Truro School, the locket was V’s borrowed and old item.You may know the saying – ’Something old, something new, Something borrowed, something blue’ to bring good luck to the newly wedded couple.
My Brother, my Sister-in-law and my Dad
There is something very special about being able to lend such a precious item to someone you love. My Mum had died only three weeks before the wedding so this is a particularly poignant memory. She would have been so pleased that the locket was being worn again, at another family wedding and welcoming another daughter into the family.
You can click on any photo to see more detail. Several of these are photos of photos so are not as clear as the originals.
For others in this Challenge, see http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/photo-challenge-object/
Weekly Photo Challenge: Joy
This Seagull represents JOY to me. You may find that strange so I will explain. When I lived away from Cornwall, the call of a seagull brought home into my head and with it the sea and the sand and the cliffs and everything that Cornwall means to me.
Seagull
My Mum loved Cornwall as much as I do and when we knew she was dying, the whole family came from all over the world to see her. When my brother and I went to register her death, a Seagull walked into the office before we could close the door and we joked that it was Mum, come to make sure we did everything properly. We had a family outing to St Ives a day or two later and a single Seagull came to sit on the car while we getting the parking ticket. We joked that Mum was there with us to enjoy St Ives with us as she had done so often and at the wonderfully moving Humanist Celebration of her life, there in the garden was a solitary Seagull……. Mum is with us still and still brings me joy.
