When Ido becomes I don’t
There have always been grooms and brides who have got cold feet, writes Tina White.
Weddings are usually happy occasions for everyone involved. But what happens when the bride or groom changes their mind at the last minute and does not show up?
One recent bride, celebrated on the internet, reacted by quitting her job and travelling the world, something she described as ‘‘the best thing I ever did’’.
Others find it too humiliating an experience to get over so quickly.
But wedding-day cold feet is nothing new. Even in New Zealand in the days when ‘‘improper’’ behaviour was heavily frowned on by society, stories of runaway bridegrooms or breaches of promise appeared fairly often in newspaper reports.
Take the case of the Stratford fiance Stanley Newlands, 22, whose wedding day dawned fine on Wednesday, January 2, 1935.
The Stratford Presbyterian Church was crowded with happy guests, waiting for the 11am ceremony. At 10am Stanley was nowhere to be found. A search was made and his car was found abandoned in Beaconsfield Rd.
He had been spotted in Midhirst earlier but left the village and apparently vanished.
‘‘Police were informed and a thorough search made, without results. The minister, the Rev J McGregor, phoned the (unnamed) bride suggesting the wedding be postponed for an hour. Later, the guests went home.’’
By January 8, Stanley was still missing, and it was suspected he
It was the friend who stood up and said loudly: ‘‘This wedding should not be allowed to proceed until he has rectified the wrong he has done my friend.’’
might have met with foul play.
However, around January 8, searchers found signs of an improvised camp near the farm of Stanley’s father, containing food that had gone missing from the farmhouse earlier.
The story was followed by various newspapers around the country. On January 9, it was reported that Stanley’s friend, Alfred Skedgwell, had been heading home along Salisbury Rd when he saw Stanley, looking unkempt, walking towards him.
The two stopped and started talking, and Stanley said he was heading for Whakatane.
When ‘‘Skedgwell expressed his doubts, Newlands produced a railway ticket to Whakatane’’.
Then Stanley, spotting his uncle in the distance, ‘‘climbed over a hedge’’ out of sight. The search parties were called off.
The official explanation for Stanley’s behaviour was recorded as ‘‘loss of memory’’.
New Zealand Truth ,on June 6, 1929, pulled out all the stops on a ‘‘poignant story of blighted love’’. The female friend of a dumped fiancee had stood up in the middle of a wedding ceremony at Wellington’s St Mary of the Angels church and denounced the bridegroom. Every nuance was wrung out of this long, involved story, in which the bridegroom had proposed to a girl named Pearl, given her a ring and set the wedding date. He had recently been engaged in Sydney to another young woman but he had told Pearl that his Australian romance was over. However, he later changed his mind, abruptly broke off the engagement to Pearl and reconnected with his former fiancee.
Tears, heartbreak and drama followed. Pearl went to the new wedding with her friend, intending to stop or at least disrupt the proceedings. But she lost her nerve and it was the friend who stood up and said loudly: ‘‘This wedding should not be allowed to proceed until he has rectified the wrong he has done my friend.’’
That outburst just aroused disapproval among the guests, and the marriage went ahead, although when the detailed Truth story came out it probably provided ample embarrassment for all.
An example of how word usage has changed over time comes from this cable story reprinted in the Gisborne Herald under the headline: Went On ‘Honeymoon’ with Best Man.
The article read: ‘‘Jilted the night before his wedding day, Robert Wallman, 24, a draughtsman of New Jersey, went on a honeymoon with his best man to use up the bookings.
‘‘Wallman and Joseph Krieg, aged 24, were the only spare men with 14 newly-wed couples in a chartered honeymoon airliner from New York to Florida. As soon as they landed they got a list of the gayest nightclubs in Miami Beach.’’
Meanwhile, ‘‘the former bride, brunette Bernice Kurdes, aged 19, eloped with the old flame she had really wanted to marry . . .’’
The experience of being jilted at the altar was common enough that a tongue-in-cheek 1906 English music-hall song Waiting at the Church, penned by Henry E Pether and Fred W Leigh, became wildly popular.
Singer Vesta Victoria, with whom the song became identified, made the most of the song’s punchline: ‘‘All at once, he sent around a note/here’s the very note/ and this is what he wrote: can’t get away, to marry you today – my wife won’t let me.’’
The Bush Advocate of November 27, 1907, reprinted this story that a clergyman, hearing the song, had told Vesta Victoria.
A couple had arranged to be married in his church in the Buckinghamshire village of Stoke Poges at 4pm on the appointed day.
The bride arrived on time but by 6pm the groom had not appeared and the bride went home.
Another appointment was made and, again, the groom failed to show up. As 5pm came and went, the bride had exclaimed: ‘‘Drat him –’taint his trousers this time, ’cause I bought him a pair!’’