I am often asked by brides, “what happens if it rains on my wedding day?” You embrace it and have fun with it, is what I always say. Whilst we obviously all hope it stays dry on your wedding day, this is England and there are no guarantees for good weather at any time of year, as this early autumn wedding shows.
Nothing had really gone entirely to plan for Tetiana and Ahmed’s wedding at Chelsea Register Office. This was always intended to be a super intimate ceremony, as there was a much bigger wedding planned in Israel later on in the year. For this civil ceremony in the Harrington Room, the groom’s immediate family had flown in from Israel and the bride’s mother had traveled from the Ukraine (I love it when such diverse nations come together to create new families! Don’t you?).
But there had been a misunderstanding about the ceremony start time, and so the bride and groom arrived, perfectly relaxed, half an hour late for their wedding! Thankfully, the couple had chosen a super short ceremony with no readings or even an exchange of rings, so there was just about enough time to squeeze the ceremony in before the registrars had to move on to the next couple. On top of that, the Harrington Room is tiny and whilst the registrars generously squeezed in one extra guest (the bride’s mother!), some of the family members had to wait outside the room for the ceremony to finish.
And just to top things off, it had been raining heavily, on and off, all morning. When we came out of the ceremony, it was temporarily dry, but the rain soon came back. So what did we do? Well to start with, Tetiana and Ahmed never once let the rain dampen their spirits in the slightest – and that is the single most important thing, when dealing with a wet wedding. There is no point looking glum and miserable about it, even if it wasn’t what you dreamed of when envisaging your wedding. The couple were prepared for rain and armed with a lovely white umbrella. Did their feet get a little wet? Well yes, but the rest of them stayed dry (unlike me, who did get rather soaked 🙂 ), as we wandered around the nearby streets looking for different types of shelter.
Seeketh and ye shall find! There are doorways and overhangs everywhere, if you look hard enough. And of course, there’s little more romantic than cuddling up under an umbrella together. So I say rain, schmain – bring it on! And look at what we got – aren’t these two gorgeous?
