Mac and I were married on September 1, 1979 by my father at his church in Thornhill Ontario. What a great day! The weather was perfect for the outdoor reception following the ceremony, which was held at a lovely private home set in a wooded grove.
My mother had hired a steel band , who managed to get lost trying to find the house. The mansion was in a rather remote location, and without the luxury of GPS the poor fellows arrived an hour late. Many of the wedding guests had already changed into bathing suits and were sipping rum punch as the band hastily organized their equipment bedside the swimming pool.
Our reception was FUN, so different from the stiff formal affairs held at country clubs or banquet halls! We danced to the beat of the steel pans and frolicked in the pool, drifting up to the house when the buffet was ready. The older family members, including my maternal grand-mother, had opted to stay in the house while the younger set played.
Grandma Weldon, waiting for the buffet, was outraged when I made my appearance in a bathing suit. My hair was messy, my skin burned from the sun and I was not her idea of how a bride should look on her wedding day! I quickly changed into suitable attire and brushed my tousled hair but grandma was not a happy camper.
My Grandmother, originally from England, had emigrated to Canada at the age of 21. Unfortunately she had a few prejudices, colored skin being one of them. I don’t think she realized until the wedding that Mac was not a white man, and he was a lot browner than usual after a summer toiling in the sun! Momma Simmons was brown-skinned, some of the other guests downright black, and Grandma was obviously not comfortable with it.
Mac and I spent our wedding night at a fancy hotel in Toronto, a gift from my mother when she realized Mac intended to take me to his brother’s apartment after the reception! We had a very late dinner with our friends Brian and Sue in the Hotel’s Japanese restaurant. It had been a long and certainly eventful day and I was more than ready for my pillow by the time we retired to our room.
The next day Mac and I returned to my parents’ house (the Anglican Rectory) to open our wedding gifts. We would be returning to Bequia soon and needed to get organized. We planned to pack the gifts inside a refrigerator, kind of like packing a Caribbean barrel! The ‘fridge was a practical gift from mom and dad and it made a perfect shipping crate.
While opening our gifts my Grandmother called, and I could tell she was not happy with me. After expressing her dismay that I planned on going into the “service industry” (this from a woman who had been a charwoman all her life!) she advised me never to have children. I’m afraid I was going to disappoint my Grandmother!