Our Affirmation of Vows in Croydon

Our ceremony

We reaffirmed our vows on Saturday 15 June at Croydon Unitarian Church.

After lunch at our Purley home for family and our Gentlemen Ushers, a minibus took us to the church.

Gillian Stone (piano) played ‘Elizabeth’ and ’In the Garden’ from Hubert Parry's Shulbrede Tunes while our Gentlemen Ushers, Kenny Lumsden and René Nunn, got everyone seated.

At 3 p.m. the Minister, Revd Art Lester, asked our guests to be upstanding and we entered the church together to the sounds of ‘Salut d'Amour’ by Sir Edward Elgar.

We lit the chalice flame together, we remembered Ross's late husband, Roger Burg, we sang a Unitarian hymn, and the ceremony continued with readings (full text on another page) and an extraordinarily apt song by our Churchwarden, Lol Benbow.

We exchanged vows, we drank from the quaich, our guests joined in the acclamation, and we concluded with Parry's ‘Jerusalem’. 

Garden party in Purley

After the ceremony we had a reception and garden party at our house in Purley, starting with canapés, and continuing a with a paella, cooked on the patio by Food for Thought. Our Master of Ceremonies, Peter Scott-Presland, introduced Marietta Crichton Stuart to propose our toast, and we both responded. We cut the top tier of the cake (which we'd brought with us from Falkland) and danced to the music of the Dixieland Stompers