A marriage is usually seen as a happy occasion, an event where you hope the married couple will have many years of life and happiness together. So it seems unusual to be married in a church.
But that's was Samantha Smyth and Paul Adams, a pair of Goths, have done.
It is against the law to be married in a cemetery, so 8 months after the original ceremony they had a blessing in their local cemetery in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.
The bridesmaids wore matching outfits while her son Kurt, six, wore an AC/DC T-shirt and six-month-old baby Nathan wore a sailor suit.
Unusually (in Britain), Paul is a Protestant and Samantha is a Catholic, yet they still love each other.
Following the blessing the Goth couple returned to their local pub where they cut their giant French Fancy wedding cake with a metre-long Scottish broad sword - then they probablty went home and listened to some Black Sabbath or Depeche Mode.
Grave business, marriage... Gothic couple have their wedding blessed... in a cemetry
By Daily Mail Reporter
17th November 2009
Daily Mail
A gothic couple have become the first in the UK to have their wedding blessed in a graveyard.
Samantha Smyth, 25, and husband Paul Adams, 33, had originally planned to marry at the unlikely venue but realised it would mean their marriage was not legally recognised.
They later decided to fulfil their dream by having a blessing in their local cemetery eight months after their ’legal wedding’ in a traditional registry office.
Spooky: Gothic couple Samantha Smyth and Paul Adams invited 40 friends and family to the marriage blessing in Wisbech General Cemetery
The blessing, which occurred at Wisbech General Cemetery on Saturday, was performed by a Spiritualist minister as 40 family and friends gathered around the disused four acre site's ancient stone chapel.
Miss Smyth, a mother-of-three, wore a white gown, flecked with strips of red material and completed her outfit with a black fur coat and black flowers in her hair.
Her bridesmaids and daughter, Raveena, nine, wore matching outfits while her son Kurt, six, wore and AC/DC T-shirt and six-month-old baby Nathan wore a sailor suit.
The newlyweds originally met at their local pub eight years ago. They live just 200 yards from the cemetery where they have walked their three dogs daily for the last two years.
Factory supervisor Adams, who is from a Protestant family, asked Miss Smyth if she wanted to have a blessing at the site after it underwent a £90,000 regeneration programme.
Family affair: Forty of the couple's family and friends gathered around the disused four acre site's ancient stone chapel for the blessing
The housewife, who is from a family of Catholics, said that her friends thought she was mad when she told them she was having the £2000 wedding in a graveyard.
She said: ‘My dad, who is a hardcore Catholic didn't believe me when I told him but when I showed him the site - he just said to do whatever made me happy.
‘We had a wonderful day and it was actually very peaceful and tranquil with all the graves and trees sweeping over the chapel.’
Following the blessing the couple returned to their local pub where they cut their giant French Fancy wedding cake with a metre-long Scottish broad sword.
Adams added: ‘It's a kind of a strange place but it is a really pretty building and everybody really enjoyed the blessing."
A spokesman for Fenland District Council who granted permission for the couple to be blessed on the site said he wished the couple all the best for the future.
Spiritualists believe the human soul is immortal and that those living in the physical body and those living in spirit can communicate with each other.
History of Cemeteries
Until relatively recent, any couple would have had to have been certified insane to have married in a cemetery. The stench would have been unbearable.
Until 1823, anyone who committed suicide in Britain was buried under a public highway, usually at a cross roads, with a stake driven through the heart. In 1823, it became law that suicides must be buried in graveyards but only between the hours of 9pm and midnight and without the rites of the Church. It wasn't until as late as 1832 that the compulsory dissection of muderers' bodies was abolished and the gruesome punishment of being hanged in chains was abolished in 1834. There will still the heads of traitors stuck on spikes in various places in London until as late as the 1850s.
Under common law, every parishioner and inhabitant of a parish had a right to be buried in his or her parish churchyard (actually in the grounds of a church) or burial ground (unless you were a suicide before 1823). But this proved impractical as, obviously, this would cause graveyards to become overcrowded. The churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London was only 200 feet square yet, in the early 1840's, was estimated to contain the remains of between sixty and seventy thousand persons!
By 1850 most London churchyards were so overcrowded that they posed a severe health risk to those people working or living nearby. Body parts, such as hands, would poke out through the ground. Thousands of bodies were even buried in shallow pits beneath the floorboards of chapels and schools. Congregations and pupils had to beathe the foul-smelling air which resulted.
A pressure group, the National Society for the Abolition of Burial in Towns, was established in 1845 and two years later the Cemeteries Clauses Act enacted general powers to establish commercial cemeteries. The Act failed in its purpose and was followed by the Burial Act of 1852, which remained the principal piece of legislation on the subject until largely repealed in 1972.
The 1852 Act required the General Board of Health to establish purpose-built cemeteries to deal with the problem of overcrowding.
Many of these cemeteries are still around today, such as Highgate Cemetery in North London and Kensal Green Cemetery in West London. Those buried at Highgate include Michael Faraday, Karl Marx and George Eliot.
Many of East London's inhabitants were buried at Brookwood. To us nowadays it may seem macabre, but Waterloo Station had its own "railway of the dead", in which the dead, in their coffins, and the mourners were taken to Brookwood where the railway ran into the cemetery itself. This "railway of the dead" wasn't abolished until the 1940s.
dailymail.co.uk
But that's was Samantha Smyth and Paul Adams, a pair of Goths, have done.
It is against the law to be married in a cemetery, so 8 months after the original ceremony they had a blessing in their local cemetery in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.
The bridesmaids wore matching outfits while her son Kurt, six, wore an AC/DC T-shirt and six-month-old baby Nathan wore a sailor suit.
Unusually (in Britain), Paul is a Protestant and Samantha is a Catholic, yet they still love each other.
Following the blessing the Goth couple returned to their local pub where they cut their giant French Fancy wedding cake with a metre-long Scottish broad sword - then they probablty went home and listened to some Black Sabbath or Depeche Mode.
Grave business, marriage... Gothic couple have their wedding blessed... in a cemetry
By Daily Mail Reporter
17th November 2009
Daily Mail
A gothic couple have become the first in the UK to have their wedding blessed in a graveyard.
Samantha Smyth, 25, and husband Paul Adams, 33, had originally planned to marry at the unlikely venue but realised it would mean their marriage was not legally recognised.
They later decided to fulfil their dream by having a blessing in their local cemetery eight months after their ’legal wedding’ in a traditional registry office.
Spooky: Gothic couple Samantha Smyth and Paul Adams invited 40 friends and family to the marriage blessing in Wisbech General Cemetery
The blessing, which occurred at Wisbech General Cemetery on Saturday, was performed by a Spiritualist minister as 40 family and friends gathered around the disused four acre site's ancient stone chapel.
Miss Smyth, a mother-of-three, wore a white gown, flecked with strips of red material and completed her outfit with a black fur coat and black flowers in her hair.
Her bridesmaids and daughter, Raveena, nine, wore matching outfits while her son Kurt, six, wore and AC/DC T-shirt and six-month-old baby Nathan wore a sailor suit.
The newlyweds originally met at their local pub eight years ago. They live just 200 yards from the cemetery where they have walked their three dogs daily for the last two years.
Factory supervisor Adams, who is from a Protestant family, asked Miss Smyth if she wanted to have a blessing at the site after it underwent a £90,000 regeneration programme.
Family affair: Forty of the couple's family and friends gathered around the disused four acre site's ancient stone chapel for the blessing
The housewife, who is from a family of Catholics, said that her friends thought she was mad when she told them she was having the £2000 wedding in a graveyard.
She said: ‘My dad, who is a hardcore Catholic didn't believe me when I told him but when I showed him the site - he just said to do whatever made me happy.
‘We had a wonderful day and it was actually very peaceful and tranquil with all the graves and trees sweeping over the chapel.’
Following the blessing the couple returned to their local pub where they cut their giant French Fancy wedding cake with a metre-long Scottish broad sword.
Adams added: ‘It's a kind of a strange place but it is a really pretty building and everybody really enjoyed the blessing."
A spokesman for Fenland District Council who granted permission for the couple to be blessed on the site said he wished the couple all the best for the future.
Spiritualists believe the human soul is immortal and that those living in the physical body and those living in spirit can communicate with each other.
History of Cemeteries
Until relatively recent, any couple would have had to have been certified insane to have married in a cemetery. The stench would have been unbearable.
Until 1823, anyone who committed suicide in Britain was buried under a public highway, usually at a cross roads, with a stake driven through the heart. In 1823, it became law that suicides must be buried in graveyards but only between the hours of 9pm and midnight and without the rites of the Church. It wasn't until as late as 1832 that the compulsory dissection of muderers' bodies was abolished and the gruesome punishment of being hanged in chains was abolished in 1834. There will still the heads of traitors stuck on spikes in various places in London until as late as the 1850s.
Under common law, every parishioner and inhabitant of a parish had a right to be buried in his or her parish churchyard (actually in the grounds of a church) or burial ground (unless you were a suicide before 1823). But this proved impractical as, obviously, this would cause graveyards to become overcrowded. The churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London was only 200 feet square yet, in the early 1840's, was estimated to contain the remains of between sixty and seventy thousand persons!
By 1850 most London churchyards were so overcrowded that they posed a severe health risk to those people working or living nearby. Body parts, such as hands, would poke out through the ground. Thousands of bodies were even buried in shallow pits beneath the floorboards of chapels and schools. Congregations and pupils had to beathe the foul-smelling air which resulted.
A pressure group, the National Society for the Abolition of Burial in Towns, was established in 1845 and two years later the Cemeteries Clauses Act enacted general powers to establish commercial cemeteries. The Act failed in its purpose and was followed by the Burial Act of 1852, which remained the principal piece of legislation on the subject until largely repealed in 1972.
The 1852 Act required the General Board of Health to establish purpose-built cemeteries to deal with the problem of overcrowding.
Many of these cemeteries are still around today, such as Highgate Cemetery in North London and Kensal Green Cemetery in West London. Those buried at Highgate include Michael Faraday, Karl Marx and George Eliot.
Many of East London's inhabitants were buried at Brookwood. To us nowadays it may seem macabre, but Waterloo Station had its own "railway of the dead", in which the dead, in their coffins, and the mourners were taken to Brookwood where the railway ran into the cemetery itself. This "railway of the dead" wasn't abolished until the 1940s.
dailymail.co.uk
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