July 1993

Reggie and Jean Get Married

In the summer of 1993, Reggie and Jean were married at the Curling Club in Souris.

It was a nice wedding and reception, surrounded by family and friends. Like many young couples, Reggie and Jean were working within a budget, and they found some creative ways to keep the cost of the reception down.

One detail has always stuck in my mind.

Instead of buying traditional candle holders for the tables, they used potatoes.

The potatoes were cut so that candles could be placed in them and then used as table decorations. I had never seen anything like it before and thought it was a particularly PEI solution to keeping wedding costs down.

I later learned that using potatoes as candle holders was not entirely unheard of and apparently had historical precedents. Whatever its origins, it was certainly appropriate for a wedding in Souris, in a family with such strong connections to potato farming.

Honeymooning Across Europe

After the wedding, Reggie and Jean travelled to Europe for their honeymoon.

They visited seven countries, including stops in Amsterdam, Munich, Prague, Vienna and Budapest. It was an ambitious trip and gave them an opportunity to experience a part of the world that neither had seen before.

Reggie loved to travel, and this would become one of several major trips he made during these years.

A Night in the Budapest Train Station

One of the stories Reggie later told me about their honeymoon involved their arrival in Budapest.

Reggie said that he and Jean arrived by train late at night without having booked a hotel. They were uncomfortable with some of the people they encountered around the station and apparently decided that heading out into an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night wasn’t a particularly good idea.

Instead, they spent the night in the train station.

Fortunately, they had a camera.

The photograph below shows Reggie stretched out on a station bench, apparently making the best of their unexpected accommodations for the night.