Open Writing

In June, 2009, my daughter, Diane, discovered that she was fraudulently recorded as married to a man from Pakistan. This was due to questionable practice at South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs. She had never met the man but was on record as being married to him for over five years.*

It took six months of visiting Home Affairs Offices, filling in forms, writing and signing affidavits and repeating the whole procedure when the documents were ‘lost’ between offices. Diane suffered much anxiety before her status in the official records of our country was returned to that of single, and the person from Pakistan was erased from her history.

The rectification was just in time. On Christmas Eve last year, an ‘old flame’ of Diane’s, Adam, proposed to her on Skype. They are a modern couple, and computers play a very big part in their lives. Adam has lived in London for about seven years, and that was where he was when he proposed, having just returned home from a ten-day holiday in South Africa, spent with my daughter.

Leon and I, and all our family, were delighted. Adam is a terrific person and he and Diane were, as far as we can tell, made to be together.

They wanted to keep their decision to marry secret until Adam could return to South Africa and propose in person. However, the logistics of Diane’s move to England to be with Adam overcame all these plans. Because of poor control at South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, such as Diane had experienced, the United Kingdom recently imposed strict visa requirements on visiting South Africans. Diane is a South African Citizen. After some research, they found that the best type of visa to enable her to live and work in London is the ‘spousal’ visa. Adam was planning to return to South Africa in early March to take photos at good friends Vanessa’s and Craig’s wedding. Diane and Adam thought of going to a Home Affairs Office on the day before their friends’ wedding and quietly getting married, then having a big celebration a year later.

However, Vanessa, who has been Diane’s best friend since college days, decided that Adam and Diane had to have a wedding they would remember. As Di’s mother, I wanted to be present at their marriage and felt that, as memories would be made of the occasion, those memories should be beautiful. So the pressure was on the couple to have a ‘small but pretty wedding’. Once they decided to make an Occasion of the occasion, it snowballed. Our bride-to-be suffered two weeks of severe stress, organising the whole thing with only a little help.

Three and a half weeks after they decided to ‘have a wedding’, Diane and Adam were married at half-past four on the first Friday in March, at Vanessa and Craig’s home. Vanessa was Di’s bridesmaid on Friday, and Diane was her matron of honour on Saturday. Vanessa’s rationalisation: “The house and garden will be set up for our wedding any way, for goodness’ sake, use it!” The guest-list, which started with only two witnesses, grew to forty, though limited to parents, Diane’s brothers and sisters and their partners, and a few very close friends. Adam’s brothers and their wives are all in England, and couldn’t come to South Africa at such short notice.

It was a very pretty garden wedding. Di wore the dress made for her as bridesmaid to Vanessa – a short, very beautiful gunmetal grey satin, with a bouquet of white roses and daisies. Adam was dressed in a fabulous grey suit and satin tie and was tall and very handsome, with eyes only for Diane.

It rained that afternoon. Correction: it poured. The marriage officer, who arrived on a motor-bike, was soaked to the skin; Leon was soaked getting my mother out of the car and indoors; my mother was somewhat traumatised after the drive through pelting rain, almost-continuous lightning and roaring thunder; several guests were caught in the traffic jam caused by the storm and missing the ceremony. Di waited over half an hour after the scheduled time of the wedding, until the rain turned to a light drizzle, then I played my flute while she and her adopted older brother, Antony, walked arm-in-arm down the path of coloured rose-petals on the green lawn to the rose arch where Adam waited.

In spite of the persistent drizzle, the marriage officer gave a long and eccentric talk on four different kinds of love. People laughed a lot at his words and he even burst into rock-‘n-roll songs a couple of times!

Di and Adam made their vows to each other and were pronounced man and wife under the lovely, dripping, arch that a friend had spent hours earlier in the day decorating with ivy and white roses.

Afterwards, champagne and snacks were served on the veranda while formal photos were taken in the garden. I made a little speech, which seemed to be appreciated by Diane and Adam and their guests.

That evening, most of the guests joined Diane and Adam at a restaurant for a lovely meal together.

Sadly, Adam, who only arrived in SA on the morning of the wedding, flew back to the UK the following Monday evening. Diane is still in South Africa, doing all the administrative work of winding up her South African life and applying for her spousal visa from the British High Commission. The minute she has that, she will leave South Africa to live in London with her delightful husband.

We wish Diane and Adam all the happiness, love and laughter that their hearts can hold, for the rest of their lives.

Every mother yearns to see her children as radiant with joy as Diane and Adam were on their lovely wedding day.

Until next time, …’here come Treble!’

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*The article about Diane’s ‘fradulent’ marriage, What Goes Around, can be read at: http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2009/06/what_goes_aroun.php#more.

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© Reserved by Isabel Bradley