Double celebrations for Pleasant Point couples
It will be double the celebrations when two Pleasant Point couplescelebrate their diamond wedding anniversaries on Thursday.
Bernie and Gwenyth Wilson, and Alf and Anne Dowall, were married on May 7, 1960.
The couple are known to one another – both men worked together in the late 1970s at the old Pleasant Point High School.
The Wilsons had their wedding at St Paul’s Church, in Timaru, and the Dowall’s nuptials were at Pleassant Point’s St Alban’s Church.
Bernie and Gwenyth met at a party in December 1959, and it was love at first sight. Six months later they married.
Both grew up in Timaru and Gwenyth was training to be a nurse and Bernie a teacher at the time.
‘‘He was somebody who made me happy. He was relaxed and very good looking,’’ she said.
Her wedding dress was pure satin and lace with a long train and her three bridesmaids wore a peacock colour.
The couple’s honeymoon was spent in Tekapo for a night, then at the Hermitage at Mt Cook Village, where it snowed, and then Queenstown. Bernie was captain of Old Boys’ rugby team and so the honeymoon ended for him to return in time to play.
Gwenyth’s secret to their long marriage was honesty and marrying the perfect person for her.
‘‘Finding the right person is the biggest decision,’’ she said.
Bernie said he and Gwenyth had a lot in common and had spent time enjoying overseas travel.
The highlight of their time together has been having four children.
While both men had worked at Pleasant Point High School – Bernie as Form 1 and 2 dean, and Alf was deputy principal, the couples’ connections don’t end there.
Both wives were nurses and Gwenyth and Anne both attended Timaru Girls’ High School and knew each other vaguely.
Anne met her husband to be while working in Tekapo as a house maid at Tekapo House at the age of 18. Alf was working in the area before returning to Dunedin to study to be a high school teacher.
He recalled taking her on the back of his AJS 500cc motorbike to Lilybank alongside the lake when the weather turned bringing wind, and rain on the gravel road.
‘‘She’d never ridden on a bike before. I thought if she could do that she could handle most things,’’ he said.
Anne said she fell for Alf because he was tolerant and forgiving.
During their seven year courtship Anne was completing her nurse training in Christchurch and only got one day off a week. She only saw Alf occasionally when he rode his motorcycle up from Dunedin and they met up half way at her parents’ home in Levels.
Alf had grown up in Mosgiel. They were the first couple to be married in the new Pleasant Point church. As well as three children as attendants,
Anne’s best friend was bridesmaid and wore lavender and married Alf’s brother six weeks later.
Six months after the wedding the couple went on their OE for 16 months working and travelling around the British Isles and Western Europe in a Ford Prefect.
‘‘We went back about 12 or 14 years ago to the places we hadn’t been,’’ Anne said.
Though the couple say they are different to each other in many ways, Anne loves that Alf is dependable.
They both enjoy gardening and have had three children.
As far as offering marriage suggestions to other couples, Anne said she did not give advice but had followed what her mother said, which was ‘‘don’t let the sun go down on your wrath’’.
Both Pleasant Point couples will be celebrating their milestone anniversaries quietly under level 3 with Anne making special meals for Alf and both couples Zooming their wider family to catch up.