Restrain yourselves
HURRAH for COUNTRY LIFE in your ‘gentle plea for restraint’ (The COUNTRY LIFE guide to weddings, April 26). As a vicar, I tell all prospective wedding couples that, legal preliminaries completed, should they wish to turn up in jeans and a T-shirt with two witnesses in tow, I would be happy to marry them. It’s designed to draw their attention to what really matters—namely, their vows. Everything else is packaging. At a drinks party recently, I mentioned this to a father whose daughter had just got engaged and he practically frog-marched me across the room and demanded I repeat the suggestion to her—sadly, it subsequently transpired, to no effect. Rev Philip de Grey-warter, Vicar of Fowey, Cornwall