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When our nephew Chris and his live-in girlfriend Sam, pictured above, got married this year in Bingham, a village near Nottingham, we were already prepared for most current English (or Northern English) wedding practices: top hat and tails, minus the top hat, for the men in the wedding party, hats for the mothers of the bride and groom and even for one or two of the female guests; an exquisitely elegant bridal gown; a full set of bridesmaids; a picturesque village church decked out with flowers; a catered reception in a hotel for close friends and relatives followed by an evening party and disco to include a wider set of acquaintances; a multi-tier wedding cake trimmed with exquisite sugar flowers; and for the out-of-town relatives hotel rooms rather than mattresses on the floor. We had experienced much the same in 1995 when Chris’s elder brother Michael got married to Joanne in Darlington.

Don, Jan, Dave, Sue, Joan, Carol (in birth order)

Chris and Sam's wedding was a first for our family, in that the wedding was to be held not in Darlington but in Bingham, near Nottingham, where the happy couple own a house. That meant that the six brothers and sisters (that's us to the right; put the cursor over the person to get their name), six spouses (click to get the spouse), seven children, one spouse, two boyfriends, two grandchildren, and their great grandmother all had to be accommodated somewhere in or near Bingham.

Luckily, Chris and Sam had started planning well in advance of the date — we got our invitations while we were in China back in the fall of 2000. They found a lovely hotel overlooking the river Trent in Gunthorpe that was big enough to take our whole party for the Friday and Saturday nights. The weekend weather was unbelievably lovely after a very wet and dismal early summer. The Bingham village church was as picturesque as only an English village church can be. The bride looked very lovely, the groom as handsome as any film star (or should I say, football player?), and a very good time was had by all. We celebrated the wedding in a private garden in bright sunshine and then danced the night away in an adjoining disco.

The latest trend in Britain seems to be foreign weddings. Couples now jet off to Florida or Greece to tie the knot. The Bates family hasn't got there yet, but who knows, maybe next time. After all there are another six in Chris and Sam's generation still to be married...

A new experience for us were the preliminaries to a wedding. The happy couple prepare for the event like many other couples by organizing a stag party for him and his friends and a hen party for her and her friends. Such parties are not of recent origin, but the type of party is. Jan got to participate in a hen party for Kath Meadows. Kath married Mike Hendy at the end of August.

Then there was the wedding of Jan's college friend Dinah & Mick late in life after many happy years together. The wedding proper we missed but they scheduled a big party to celebrate not only the wedding but also Mick's 60th birthday and their joint retirement. The party was held at the end of summer in Hempstead town hall and we went to London for that.

Finally, we left Britain to go to the USA to attend the wedding of Moshe, our long time friend of Israeli origin, Belgian education, and American citizenship, to Cristhiane Luce Vieira, his new Brazilian love.