Wartime weddings

It was 1942, bang in the middle of World War II. Two Cowan family weddings were planned – one for March and the other for June.  The first was the wedding of Daisy Cowan, my Dad’s only surviving sister.

Her name wasn’t really Daisy – it was Anne Brown Cowan (on her marriage certificate, she’s known as Annie).  The name’s important – she was named directly for her paternal grandmother Anne, who was born in India and married a Scottish solider. Family legend says that Daisy came about because somebody gazing into her pram, cooed ‘awww she looks like a wee daisy’.  It’s a nice story but of course it isn’t true – I’ve found a reference to the original Annie Brown being called Daisy.  For all I know, there are more – enough for a daisy chain perhaps?

At the age of 25, she was marrying Ian MacEwan, also 25 – whose real name was John. This happens a lot in Scottish families – Ian is an equivalent of John.  And then there’s Johns who become Jacks – but that’s another story.

They married at The Station Hotel in Kirkcaldy with four adult attendants and two child bridesmaids. The little girls are awfully sweet and look as if they could be twins, but I have no idea who they were.  The grown-up bridesmaid on the right looks like a MacEwan and the one on the left is, I think, Betty Rodger, my father’s cousin on the Higgins side of the family. I would say the best man’s hair gives him away as the brother of the groom and my father is the stern looking young man to the right of the bride. All three men have immaculate buttonholes and handkerchiefs in breast pockets (the chap on the left has his squared off, which was not the smart thing – that little mountain peak of white cotton was what was required).

The ladies’ bouquets are more fern & flounce than flowers, but this was common for the wartime years.  Most of the land in Britain had been made over to growing food crops and flowers were expensive. There’s a suggestion of a mantilla on the bride’s head and with those looks – and that hair – she could have been mistaken for a Spanish senorita.

Three months later, in June of 1942, my parents married in Hamilton.

Like the previous photograph, this was taken in a studio.  Unlike today’s weddings, there were no photos of the extended family or guests and candid photos (thankfully, perhaps) hadn’t yet been dreamt of. This is a much more restrained group – one bridesmaid, one best man. The flowers, though, are still largely fern. Jim Rodger (brother of  Betty who appears in the first photo) was my dad’s best man and the men remained close friends until my father’s death. Although the men are wearing lounge suits (they probably only owned one good suit apiece), they’re both carrying gloves, a sartorial nod to formal morning dress. Much Brylcreem went into the male tonsures and both my mother and her bridesmaid (a friend) have typical 1940s hairstyles. She had just turned 18 and he was 23.

There was apparently a three tier wedding cake which disguised the baker’s secret – a tiny sponge cake hidden inside a cardboard shell.  Food rationing meant that only the rich could afford real wedding cakes – others devised alternative, ingenious solutions. My mother’s wedding dress was white silk and it didn’t last a year.  It was cut up and most of the material sent to be made into parachutes for British troops.  The little she salvaged was made into precious French knickers.

My father had been a policeman for five years at the time of his marriage.  There are telltale signs in his body language. He’s standing with his feet firmly turned outwards and his right hand has the thumb extended down the line of his trouser leg.  These gestures were things that he’d have learned while at Police College.  Almost to the end of his life, my father walked like a policemen on the beat – very upright and with long measured strides designed to cover the ground over many hours of walking.