Picture: supplied
By Elspeth Kernebone
29 October 2021
WEDDING bells have rung for the first time in months after Victoria’s COVID-19 restrictions eased, allowing ministers to perform marriages again.
One happy couple exchanged their vows less than 24-hours post-lockdown, after an unexpectedly long engagement.
Graham Watt and Rachel Carling were married at St Thomas’s Anglican in Burwood on Friday October 22, at 5pm.
Their original August date had been pushed back by 55 days by Mr Watt’s count.
The ceremony was small, with just 10 guests allowed. But hundreds watched the livestream.
Mr Watt said the wedding was everything he had hoped for, apart from the number of guests allowed.
“It was great to actually be able to get it done … we’d been putting it off for 55 days, and we just didn’t want to wait any longer,” he said.
St Thomas’s lead minister Reverend John Carrick said it felt good to perform a wedding again, especially after it had been delayed.
Mr Carrick said number restrictions meant it was a very intimate wedding, with a strange feeling of performance for people watching at home.
But he said this technology had allowed more people to watch the event than could have fit in the church building.
