Celebrating love is just priceless

In reply to your feature about the cost of weddings, I was married for the first time in Edinburgh.

I did not have to pay for the church and I split the cost of the wedding with my parents. Even with 100 guests, the total cost was under £300. It was a wonderful day.

I remarried 20 years later and the total cost was almost the same price. It was the happiest day of my life and the guests had a brilliant time too.

My husband and I both felt that money was not important – our happiness and enjoyment for family and friends was enough. We can’t see why all these “costly” weddings have to occur.

Money can’t buy love and having no worries about cash and the apparent “keeping up with the Joneses” makes the day all the more precious and enjoyable.

Margaret, Plymouth.

A united nation

THE harrowing disaster at Grenfell Tower sadly portrayed the growing gap between rich and poor.

But it also showed the community cohesion which arises from such horrors.

We have to start pulling together and acknowledge we should all live in this world as equals. Through circumstances, good and bad things can happen to all of us.

Let’s bring communities together – not just when disasters happen – to help each other, to make us stronger and to ensure each and every one of us is safe and cared for every day in this time of insecurity. Geraldine Syson, Glasgow.

NO doubt the resolve and morale of the nation has been tested to the limit over the recent period.

Britain might not be at war as such but the strength of character and unity – characteristic throughout the two Great Wars – is certainly being replicated in these troubled and difficult times. Angus McGregor, Edinburgh.

Alive and kicking

INDYREF2 is not “dead in the water” as Dennis Forbes Grattan stated last week.

The SNP won the election in Scotland so Indyref2 is most definitely still on the cards. This is what is called democracy.

What is not democratic is Scotland voting one way and ending up with whomever England voted for in government.

Scotland is the best country in the world and deserves to make its own decisions. Andy Garden, Edinburgh.

IN a General Election where losers were winners and winners were losers, Jeremy Corbyn and Ruth Davidson were feted as

victors while Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon remained in power, but weakened and wounded.

How easily can Mrs May now implement the kind of Brexit she seeks? How will Ms Sturgeon roll back from Indyref2, which she’s struggling to stage and seemingly has a slim chance of winning?

Martin Redfern, Edinburgh.

Genius Jean

I WAS interested in reading your story about 95-year-old Eileen Docherty who is good at crosswords.

I too have a friend who is 97 and a

dab-hand at crosswords. Jean has no mobile phone or computer to check her answers, just her own brain.

She lives in the same house she was born in – two stairs up in a tenement – and can still tell you who owned which neighbouring shops and what they sold for.

Both Jean and Eileen are as elegant as each other. Well done girls!

V., Glasgow.

And finally...

MY wife and I often laugh about how competitive we are. But I laugh more... Mike Scott, via email.