Blast from the Past

I’m starting up what I hope will become a weekly category on ‘Pining’ – Blast from the Past. It’ll be a mixture of things I think, sometimes old photos, postcards or objects with a bit of history to them, anything oldish really which might be of interest or a bit of a laugh. I hope people will feel free to link to their own old photos, or whatever, in the comments if they so wish.

As today is our 38th wedding anniversary (I can hardly believe it) I thought I would kick it off with some photos from our wedding day. These obviously come under the laugh category!! Jack actually did have his hair cut especially for the big day, but our boys could never believe that. And what about those flares! The wee boy is my nephew and he now has teenage boys of his own, nowadays children in wedding photos tend to be the children of the couple getting married! How times have changed! Everyone who looks at this photo has remarked that it looks like I’m missing half a finger but I can assure you I do have a complete set, despite nasty slicing accidents whilst cooking.

J ,K & D

As you can see the fashion in bridal wear in 1976 was for something resembling a nightgown, and the dresses were all smocked which must have been handy for pregnant brides, but I wasn’t in that condition, despite the usual rumours. It was almost ten years before we went down that road. I still think 1970s bridal dresses look better than what is on offer to brides today. The poor things seem to have had no choice but to hang out of the tops of their almost non existent bodices for about 15 years now.

Windswept is what best describes the photo below I think, you can just see the old Dumbarton bridge in the background so we were on the banks of the River Leven and despite it being August 1976 it was blooming cold. Everyone always remembers that as a long hot summer but in Scotland the weather had just broken and when we went on our honeymoon, all the way to exotic Inverness, I was so glad that I had taken a winter coat with me as it was freezing up there.
J & K

The second of August 1976 was a Monday bank holiday, a strange day to get married you might think but Saturday was a complete no-no as far as Jack was concerned because as a mad Dumbarton football fan (a Son of the Rock) there was no way he was going to miss the beginning of the new football season. In fact we went to Inverness because at that time there were THREE football grounds in the town and he wanted to visit them all. We went to one match at one of them, but he made sure he got a look at them all. You would think that one football ground is much the same as another but apparently not.

Of course when we got married everyone said – it’ll never last, but it has, and sadly people don’t say – you can’t possibly have been married that length of time, the way they did when it was our 25th wedding anniversary. But I hadn’t looked at these photos for years and it was a shock to me to see how young I looked, a mad but optimistic 17 year old.

K

You might notice that the wedding dress is actually cream not white, I’ve never liked those pure Daz white dresses. In fact I never even wanted to get married in a church and I would have been happier in jeans, I just didn’t want to be the centre of attention but marrying into such a churchy family – the minister who married us was actually Jack’s brother – there was no way we could just go off and have a nice quiet wedding. They say it’s the bride’s day but it didn’t feel like it for me, I think that’s often the way with weddings.

Anyway, I hope you found that to be a bit of a laugh. The next blast from the past will be completely different, definitely nothing to do with me/us.

19 thoughts on “Blast from the Past

  1. Congratulations on your wedding anniversary! You looked a very attractive young couple and I love your graceful wedding-gown. True that the cream colour will have suited your colouring better than white – I have auburn hair myself đŸ™‚ Precious photos of your special day. Many more years to you both!

    • Valerie,
      Thanks. I’m glad to say that my hair is still more or less the same colour. If I didn’t have my colour of hair (what my mother called strawberry blonde) I would have wanted auburn hair. We redheads should stick together!

  2. Congratulations on your wedding anniversary, Katrina (and Jack). You looked lovely in your cream dress, and I love the colour of your hair.
    Hope you have many more anniversaries!

    I’ve been having a few Blast from the Past moments myself recently. It’s great going down Memory Lane!

    • Evee,
      Thanks. I don’t often look at old photos but I’ve been enjoying it recently after they turned up during the house move. I loved your blast from the past photo of you in your mini skirt singing in your band – or was it a group!

      • I think we called them folk groups in those days!!! It was the nearest to a miniskirt I ever wore! I caught up with one of our old pals from those days last week. He got my email address from Ian in the group and wrote to me recently! So that was the blast from the past I was mentioning! So far the group’s reunion hasn’t materialised this year yet. It was supposed to be at Ian’s in Leeds in May but nothing has been mentioned!

  3. You look lovely, like a fairy princess. The color of your dress and of your flowers suit you so well. However, you look like you’re 12 and Jack like he’s 15! How young you were! Congratulations on your 38th!

    • Joan,
      Thanks. I did look young, in fact an irate man once came up to me in the street and demanded to know why I wasn’t at school. I answered – because I’m 21. I was with my mum too, he slunk off red-faced!
      On the other hand policemen nowadays look about 12 – we’re just getting old!

  4. They are lovely pictures, Katrina! I remember the days of long straight hair, which was good for me, since mine would never curl. You both look so young. Congratulations on your anniversary – many happy returns.

    • Lisa,
      Thanks. Those days of long straight hair are back for me, amd a lot of other women who grew up with it in the 1970s. I’m hairdresser phobic. My hair is quite thick and when I had it short it sort of billowed out, like Dill the dog. Having it longer means the weight pulls it down and it’s actually easier to cope with. However I’ve taken to tying it back in a plait, just as I had it when I was about 10, when I’m doing gardening or cooking. I don’t think my hair style can go any further back than that!

  5. Katrina,
    I so enjoyed seeing these photos!! They’re beautiful, and they do bring me back to 1976. It’s wonderful that the color in the photos has remained true. Gorgeous dress!

    Judith

    • Judith,
      Thanks. The colours are fine but I realised that they weren’t all very well focused, and we had a professional photographer too! I didn’t notice it at the time, I think we expect higher standards now.

    • Pearl,
      No kilts at all. They weren’t so popular for weddings back then, now everyone seems to want kilts in their photos, even English brides have asked our youngest to make sure to wear his kilt when he goes to their weddings.

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