Marian Villa Home for the Aged hosts wedding to include grandmother
In a moving gesture to include her 92-year-old grandmother at her wedding, Carmen Chatterton held her wedding ceremony at the Marian Villa Home for the Aged.
This decision allowed for Chatterton’s frail grandmother, Pat Foley, who is in frail care at the home to easily attend the special event.
Carmen (Foley) and Spike
Chatterton'w wedding took place at
Marian Villa's old Catholic chapel with the reception at Chatterton’s mother’s house in Wembley.
The decision to have the wedding at the old age home was based on Chatterton’s grandmother being there and trumped all the offers Spike had got.
“We decided to check it out and loved it,” she said. “We planned it around my gran’s birthday so everyone would be able to go to both.”
Foley turned 92 the day after the wedding.
Chatterton said that her gran had invited half her dinner table in the home to attend the wedding as “for a change it’s not a funeral.”
Unfortunately, the chapel could only accommodate 60 guests so a nurse had to tell the invited residents they would be unable to attend the ceremony but could come afterwards.
The 94-year-old officiating minister told the happy couple that it was his very first English wedding. He had previously only soleminised Afrikaans weddings.
The day itself was freezing cold and raining, but Chatterton joked that the adrenaline sorted it out.
“I had a white dress for the wedding, but after the rain and mud, it was no longer white,” she said.
Jo-Anne Stevens-O’Connor, CEO of Marian Villa Home of the Aged, was thrilled to have hosted the wedding.
“We were thrilled and privileged to host the event,” Stevens-O’Connor said. “It was very thoughtful of the granddaughter to do this for her grandmother. Unfortunately the weather was not so good.”
The couple have just returned from their week-long honeymoon in Underberg.