SCENES AT WEDDING

Taranaki Daily News, 15 August 1933, Page 9

SCENES AT WEDDING

LONDON CHURCH STORMED.

GUESTS LOCKED OUT.

Latecomers among, the 2000 guests invited to the wedding in London on June 29 of Sir Paul Latham, M.P. for Scarborough and Whitby, and Lady Patricia Moore, the Earl of Drogheda’s daughter, were responsible for remarkable scenes at St. Margaret’s, Westminster.

Hundreds of sight-seers in Parliament Square suddenly saw the huge double doors of the church slammed, and a policeman force his way through the crowd of guests standing four-deep in queues in the pathway to the porch. Men in silk hats and morning clothes and women in chiffon dresses and cartwheel picture hats were thrust on one side, and guests found themselves locked out. Mr. H. Silvester, verger of St. Margaret’s, took this precaution to prevent the congestion inside the church from becoming unmanageable. Before the rush started guests whose names did not appear in the specially printed plan of the church, with which the 12 ushers were provided, were shown into the pews at the back, and these filled up rapidly, later arrivals stood in the aisles and round the front until it was almost impossible to pass from one side tof the church to the other.

There was not even a clear pathway to the centre aisle for the bride and her bridesmaids. With the stream of guests stemmed for the time being the ushers squeezed additional people into the already full pews and confiscated some of those seats which had been allotted by name to important guests and were not occupied. The doors were not opened again, however, until the signal was given that the bride’s car had arrived, a policeman taking charge of the door. When Lady Patricia, in her white satin bridal gown and attended by whiterobed bridesmaids carrying yellow arums, had joined the bridegroom in the chancel, the door was again opened a few inches and the verger announced that 20 people could be admitted. Nearly double that number, however, forced their way into the porch. Women .left outside pleaded vainly with the policeman and the ushers. Then someone called out, “The Duchess of Westminster is here,” and she, with two or three friends, was admitted, but the Duchess of Marlborough, who was standing behind her, was left outside. Gradually other people forced themselves into the church until several hundreds were standing behind the pews. A hum of conversation almost drowned the voices of the clergy. Some of the guests, tired of standing, left and went on to the reception, and those who had been unable to gain admission to the church ceremony—among whom were Viscount and Viscountess Scarsdale—wandered into the Abbey grounds to wait for the bridal procession as it left. St. Margaret’s seats 1100 people, and an additional 200 have been squeezed in occasionally. Among the guests were 200 of the bridegroom’s constituents brought from Yorkshire by special train, in addition to which ’large staffs from the Earl of Drogheda’s estates were given tickets of admission.