Something old…
I thought my wedding video went up in flames
Watching couples twirl and jive, I brushed down my dress. It was May 1966, and I was ready for a night of dancing.
My friends and I came down to the Burma Ballroom in Kirkcaldy every week.
Then a hand was offered to me. Looking up, I saw a lad with sparkly, blue eyes.
‘Dance with me?’ he said to me. Gladly! His name was Colin Potter, he was 21 and training to be a mechanical fitter. ‘I want to be a teacher,’ I replied, as we danced in time. He could certainly move! At the end of the night, we arranged to meet again the next week. Though Colin lived 30 miles away, in Bo’ness, we courted for more than a year.
It wasn’t like it is now! We had to make plans weeks in advance. But I never worried that Colin wouldn’t turn up. We fell in love very quickly. By Christmas 1967, we were engaged – we announced it to our family and friends on Christmas Day.
On 27 July 1968, we got married.
It was a glorious, sunny day and I wore a beautiful dress borrowed from a friend. Well, you know how the saying goes! I walked up the aisle to the hymn played at Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s wedding – Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven.
Before 80 guests, I married my dance partner.
He was just as good on the dance floor at Strathearn Hotel.
My dad Tim, then 51, had an old-fashioned cine camera whirring away, filming us. But we never saw the footage. ‘I tried to watch the film back but it set on fire!’ Dad laughed when Colin and I returned from our Blackpool honeymoon. just as in love as we had been on our wedding day.
Then, in June last year, we came back from a holiday in Tenerife to a message from a close friend.
‘You’re in the Fife paper!’ Christine, 72, said to me on
the phone.
What?
I rushed to the shop to see Colin and me on the front page.
In our wedding gear!
But how..?
Local filmmaker Bill Gourlay had found our old video, buried among cassettes in an archive at the house of his late friend – who, it turns out, wasn’t even there at our wedding.
‘But Dad said that the film had burst into flames!’ I exclaimed.
I’d never even seen it myself.
What a mystery!
Still, there it was... Bill transferred the video to DVD and saw grainy, jumpy footage of us getting married!
Desperate to reunite us with the long-lost footage, he called
27 July 1968: it was a glorious, sunny day