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My Husband and I got married on my husband’s last leave- March 1944. It happened to be his last leave altogether. I had my dress from Wolverhampton. The flowers were so scarce that in those days. Each green grocer or florist used to take it in turns to go the market in Wolverhampton to purchase their good, they’d take it in turns owing to the petrol — and they used to share the cost.

I had a very traumatic experience. They’d arranged for the wedding, and I’d got my dress and everything was set up, and I was working in the office, and we had a Mr Shuker who used to come (‘cause everything was hand-done then you know) to check the books and that - and they were joking with me — you know how things go. He said ‘Lillian, excuse me, but he won’t marry you on that date’, and I said ‘what?’ He replied ‘no, he doesn’t believe in Lent weddings’.

My boss said ‘come on Lilian, in the car’, and he took me up to the vicarage at St Georges, and he said ‘no, I don’t do weddings during Lent. I don’t believe in the feasting during Lent. I’ll make a concession; I’ll marry you at 9 o’clock in the morning with two witnesses’. I hadn’t got to get married or anything like, that, but I sent a telegram, and he came over on 48 hours leave, and we’d got everything ready.

Instead of that, my brother and Frank (my husband to be) cycled to Shifnal, and I arranged the chapel wedding because we lived opposite the chapel, and my Mom and Dad were caretakers, and I’d always been brought up in Chapel. Being married in Church seemed something special, but anyhow, we got married in Chapel, but a friend of ours did arrangements in flowers, and she was in charge of the W.I locally, and she used to do bouquets, she was doing all our flowers, but what happened? It wasn’t Tranter’s (our local florist and greengrocer) turn to go to the Market this time. The one that went came back and said ‘I haven’t brought any flowers back because they’re too horrific, the prices are. So Mr Tranter went and brought a dozen plain coloured tulips, and they were made up to look lovely; and they were 25 shillings a dozen. It was a lot. We had other things too, they were on stems and they were little flowers — cream outside and golden in the middle, and we used to call them ‘egg and bacon’ flowers. Everything went alright after that.

Three of Frank’s friends came down from camp. Frank met them at the station, (and you’ve heard these Shropshire sayings haven’t you?) well one had the nick-name of ‘Bist’ (‘how are you’) and he went to the station to Oakengates and meet them, and as they came up the street he met as old pal of his who said ‘Hello Frank lad, how bist?’ And they all burst out laughing.

I used to worry ‘how on earth are we going to manage with only two ounces of this and an ounce of that?’ We did have a few extra allowances from the food office, for milk and butter and sugar. It was very hard but we managed in the end.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Lilian Marsh and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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