PICTURESQUE WEDDING

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 91, 29 November 1928, Page 7

PICTURESQUE WEDDING

, CEREMONY ON A YACHT. i PAUL KRUGER'S GRANDSON. One of the. most romantic weddin&u ever solemnised in South Africa, was that of Dirk Eloff, a grandson of the late Paul Kruger, and Miss Luther, which took place on board the 30ton yacht Sarie Marais in which the adventurous young couple are to sail round the world on their honeymoon. The wedding took place in the morning before the sun was over the yardarm, and the guests were rowed out from the foreshore to the yacht's anchorage in Table Bay. They gathered on the deck to the Sarie Marais under a stream of bright bunting. iTho Hoyal Cape Yacht Club burgee fluttered at the masthead, and, the Union flag flew from the mizzen. Below decks the. bridegroom stood ,!in the white, tropical uniform of a sea captain, with four gold stripes on his shoulders, and the cap and badge of the Yacht Club. At his iside was the bride in a, white silk dress, over pink, a white fur coat and white hat with turned-up brim and osprey. She held a shower bouquet of lilies. There wag room in the saloon for the clergyman and his assistant, the mother and sister of the bride, and several relatives of Mr Dirk Eloif, including his cousin, the ship'-g mate. With navigation books and instruments as their background the couple stood on one side of the saloon table and the clergyman on the other. The church register was laid on the table, pens and ink produced from the ship's lockers, and the marriage contract signed. Then, to the wedding march played by the ship's gramophone, Mr and Mrs. Eloff climbed the companionway on to the de.ck. Smartly a dighy was brought alongside and the last of the ship's stores, a big three-tier wedding cake, was taken on board. In the compact galley corks popped and under the Union flag toasts ! were drunk and the cake cut. The Rev. Dr. van der< Merwe, in pro- ' posing a health, expressed a hope ! that "the skipper would make a good' sailor of his wife, and the yacht would have the be.st of winds to carry her. across the seas of the world." The first port of call will Ik> St. Helena.