A few months ago I wrote about how much I like local newspapers, well here is and example of a wedding report which illustrates one of the reasons perfectly.
It is the marriage of my grandparents Charles Percy GASSON and Dorothy Annie TROWER on the 5th December 1936 in Keymer, Sussex. As you can see it is only a cutting and I am not sure which newspaper it came from, but I believe it is probably from The Mid-Sussex Times (one day I will get around to tracking it down).
The fact that the bride “wore a dress of blue figured crepe with a brown coat and hat to tone” and had a bouquet of “of red and yellow chrysanthemums” is probably the next best thing to having a wedding photograph, which I don’t.
Where else are you going to find such detail? Certainly not on the marriage certificate and likewise with the information about the bride’s employers and where the happy couple were going to live.
It is worth remembering that there was nothing special about this couple, he was a decorator and she was a servant. So your relatives don’t necessarily have to be rich or posh to make it into the local newspaper.
This is a wonderful resource. I’ve combed through New Brunswick (Canada) papers looking for these types of resources, though I must say that there seems to be more detail associated with the announcements of English-speaking Protestants as opposed to French-speaking Catholics (which my ancestors were).
It would be interesting to know whether there way any significance to the choice of red and yellow chrysanthemums for the wedding bouquet, or if it was just a matter of personal choice.
Evelyn in Montreal