Half a Century Ago

... my parents got married, and that's what we celebrated the Saturday before last. One of the highlights at that event was a folder of colour photos of the wedding which surprised me as I'd only ever seen black and white prints before. It turns out that a friend of theirs took colour slides and he had given them to my parents. They've now had prints made.

I immediately asked how this had been done. Dad was way ahead of me: he'd had them scanned and he had the whole lot on a CD-ROM. They were also having photos taken at the anniversary meal so we agreed that I'd put them all up on the Web so that the whole family could see them afterwards and get prints made if they wanted them.

Well the CD-ROMs arrived today and I've put the photos up. They've not gone around the family yet and I'm waiting for Mom and Dad to check they're happy with the labels I've put on the older photos (and also to fill in some of the gaps). They're online here - I think I've got them more or less in right order.

The full size originals are a bit noisy. I've cleaned up one of them (JPEG, 874KB) - compare the noise in the sky top left with the relative lack of noise on the bridesmaids' dresses. It's a work in progress: it takes a long time to do and I'm not sure it's really worth the effort as I suspect most people won't worry about the noise anyway.

But my reason for mentioning them here is that they're just a fascinating set of photos. Admittedly far more so for me that for you but they do provide a lovely snapshot of a wedding just after the end of rationing. There wasn't a lot of money about either I suspect: Mom's Dad was motor mechanic and Dad's Dad was a butcher with only one or two shops so neither of them was exactly loaded. My Dad was only two years out of university so he wouldn't have had much money either.

My Granddad Cox had a cool car though: why don't they make cars in Spam colour any more?