Duke Weddings: Mr and Mrs Bowden
The Duke of Cornwall Hotel has for many years provided a dream location for couples celebrating their marriage. We’re pleased to be able to share some of these love stories, both from recent weddings and from those in decades past. This time, we’re shining a spotlight on Jacci and Mike Bowden, a lovely couple who were married here at the hotel on 22nd March 1975.
Jacci and Mike had met through mutual friends. Their first date was a cinema trip, an outing that confirmed the couple had similar tastes – they both thought Up Pompeii was a bad film! After romance had blossomed, Mike proposed to Jacci at home, although she admits that her first thought was that he had simply fallen over!
When selecting a wedding venue, it was the Duke’s historic character and elegance that attracted Jacci and Mike to the hotel. They were impressed by features such as the Duke’s sweeping staircase – the ideal spot for staging beautiful wedding photos. And Jacci recalls how the Hayward Room, the setting for their nuptials, had impressed the couple:
“It looked grand then, and looks even grander now after its recent makeover.”
Traditional touches featured strongly in the couple’s wedding day, including a classic wedding breakfast menu of tomato soup (which, Jacci recalls, one of the page boys guzzled straight from the bowl!), a chicken main course, and sherry trifle for dessert. Roses and freesias made for a quintessential flower choice, with a colour scheme of lemon and lilac complementing the Spring season.
The couple are frequent visitors to the Duke to this day, prompting fond memories of their joyous wedding here forty-two years ago. Jacci and Mike are pictured below during our recent afternoon tea, where we celebrated the marriages held at the hotel over the past sixty years.
To other couples about to start their own journeys of marriage, Jacci offers this piece of wisdom:
“There will be sunshine and showers throughout your life together, but you have to be friends and work your way through it together.”
Thank you so much to Jacci and Mike, we are delighted to share your story and wish you many more happy years of marriage. Thank you also to Toby Lowe, the wonderful photographer for our afternoon tea celebration event.