World War II-Themed Wedding

Jo Rowell and Tony Cox of Hartlepool, England were married recently in style -1940s style!
A blackout marked the beginning of the ceremony and the silence was broken by the sounds of Neville Chamberlain announcing war on Germany.

The ceremony also included the sounds of sirens and Lancaster bombers flying overhead.

Spotlights lit up a trench scene in Normandy complete with a silhouette of an American soldier going over the top and glider planes above.

Jo then made an entrance to the sound of Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade and the touching ceremony went off without a hitch.

Link -via Look at This

A very inappropriate theme for a wedding. To open with the declaration of war and then gaily fling oneself down the aisle to Glenn Miller is a little macabre, to say the least. To include a mock-up trench scene in Normandy borders on sick. And what entitled him to wear that uniform?
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Come on, nothing says romance like the thought of millions of people dying. Kind of like kicking off a Medieval themed wedding with an announcement that the Black Plague had just wiped out the entire neighboring village. They could've done a 40's theme without that.

I also couldn't quite figure out the line in the article that said the couple planned to live apart until their children left school...like graduated? Was this a wedding or just an elaborate costume party?
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They could've had a nice 40s-themed wedding without all the war stuff. I love the fashions of the era, but the uniform bothered me the most. You shouldn't wear a military uniform to a wedding unless it's your own.
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What's wrong with war when it's just and noble? Winning WW2 was the best thing that democracies ever did - and proved that free, democratic, pluralistic sovereign nations can actually achieve something when united together against tyranny.
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Even "just and noble" wars are filled with horrible death, suffering, and sacrifice for all sides. I have heard it said (to paraphrase...) that the only people who will call a war glorious are the ones who don't have to wade through the corpses.

Anyway, everyone here so far was ripping on war as a wedding theme, not war in general. The two are rather antithetical. I wish they'd kept it as a general 1940s theme.
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A bit disrespectful to the veterans still alive today who are still having nightmares about beach landings, concentration camps and bombing campaings. Above that, this is sort of the same level as a Klingon wedding, isnt it? :-)

BTW, no war is "just and noble".
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Sure, it would have been more PC if they'd done the end of the war, rather than the beginning, but what the hell? It's their day, their spectacle.

The British have got a thing for WWII, probably always will. That's what the 40's was about.

What difference between this "show" and watching a movie about WWII?
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I'm sorry but that is just disgusting, everyone knows trench warfare was last widely used in WW1 not WW2..... Seriously though that has to be the most messed up way to get married, its one thing to get married in era costume to bring a feel of the romance of the time but its a whole other thing to re-create war scenes as part of your wedding.

Why not just have casulities on each side of the aisle way and mortars and machine gun fire in the distance while starving jews shamble around behind the alter. And for the ending we have a low-yield nuclear weapon go off overhead burning everyone's shadow into the ground(not to mention their retinas out!) YAY WORLD WAR TWO! I LOVE YOU HONEY!
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I say - good for them! Weird, but certainly creative. Wouldn't it be nice if everybody did something creative enough to mention here for their weddings?

To my wingnut friend Carruthers:

There's no such thing as a "noble and just" war, even one that by most measures had to be fought, like WW2. Nobility and fairness get tossed out the window the moment somebody starts a war.
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I'm a history geek , especially on WWII, but this is well beyond me.

Yeah, I think a 1940s themed wedding would be OK (albeit corny), but declaring war and wearing a uniform as a costume rubs me the wrong way.
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i say a couple can do whatever they darn well please at their own wedding as long as they dont sacrifice any relatives to yee high gods above. rubs you the wrong way? bah! go get your own wedding!
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To the appeasocrat Stanhope: you're the sort of person who, had you been a Frenchman in WW2 would have willingly been a pawn in the Vichy government rather than a member of the resistance.
Of course there are "just" wars. Or would you rather we lived here in the States as part of the British Commonwealth? Or perhaps Lincoln should have appeased the South in order to avoid war.
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I told my father about this wedding this morning and he loved the idea and thought it was really funny. He served in the pacific in the Army Air Corps. There is nothing disrespectful to a veteran about honoring their service and how could there be?

Apparently some of you have forgotten that there are Civil-War themed weddings in the USA every year. And you know what? They didn't "earn" the right to wear either uniform there, because that war's been over for 140 years.

Regardless about how one feels about the concept of war in general, the reality of war for veterans is almost always a double-sided sword. For all the misery they saw and caused it was the moment in time when an 18 yr old farm boy could be sent to training camps all over America and then see Hawaii, Polynesia and Japan first hand and come back knowing that they personally and literally saved the world from Adolf Hitler, arguably the worst human being who ever lived ever. For my father and frankly, for every WW2 vet I ever talked to in detail, while there were lots of sad and horrible things about the war, the triumph of democracy in the face of fascism was a goal they felt was worth dying for.

I can't argue with that, can you?
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Cruising past this again, I noticed the last line. I really hope the wedding didn't "go off without a hitch", or the whole thing would have been kinda pointless.
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I'm guessing (based on the comments above) that none of you are part of any vintage crowds.

There is a small group of people who live vintage everyday of their lives. I happen to be friends with some of them here in California. They not only dress in re-pro vintage clothes (and sometimes real vintage clothes) but they drive vintage cars, use vintage vacuum cleaners, toasters, radios, TVs, telephones, egg timers, lights, fans, doorknobs, desks and the like. Getting married in a vintage setting would only be natural to them. In fact, my cousin already has her dressed picked out and waiting.

I admit, the war aspect is a little odd....but then again, there is an annual dance in LA that has a blackout re-enacting a very strange occurrence back in the 40s.

As far as vintage people disrespecting those who were in the war....the friends I have regularly make friends with the war veterans. I have yet to see a war veteran refrain from smiling and talking to them.
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Iv just come across this article.I was the groome at this wedding.Firstly there are some mistakes made by the newspaper covering this.
1. No trench scene it was Iron mike statue in normandy.
2. Do any of these people leaving comments know that there were quite a few American servicemen who married English women during the war,so there were happy times during the dark days of war and that was what we tried to create.As for my uniform,i have done my time in the army which i think is more than some of these people leaving comments.
3.Do these people moan about people wearing military uniforms,best you have a word with hollywood then when actors are playing well known people through history.
4.We had a fantastic day even those who lived through the war said they had a great time,and all that matters is I MARRIED the WOMAN of my dreams and we are happy,maybe some of you should get out more and get a life.
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