To cavern to hold for Black Country pair

When a Midland Red bus covered in pink ribbons was driven through the Black Country, passers-by had to do a double take.

But Debbie Boddinson didn’t want just any old transport to her wedding, which took place at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley on Saturday evening.

The barmaid, who works at the museum’s Bottle and Glass Inn, decided her wedding would have a traditional Black Country theme – from the Midland Red Bus to a three-tiered pork pie for a wedding cake.

When the shiny double decker bus pulled up outside the museum’s fish and chip shop at 4pm museum visitors stared open-mouthed as Debbie, dressed in a cream and pink calf-length dress and holding a bouquet filled with cream and pink roses, stepped off.

Debbie had recruited members of Fizzog Theatre Company to add some fun to the big day and they pretended to wrestle with each other over who was going to catch Debbie’s bouquet.

“When I went for my interview to work at the Black Country Living Museum 10-years-ago I said I had always been interested in Black Country traditions.

“It is that same interest that has led to me creating such a unique wedding.”

The wedding ceremony took place in the Singing Cavern, which is reached on a canal boat through an underground tunnel at the back of the museum.

Several guests were overcome with emotion as Debbie made her entrance into the atmospherically lit underground cave in a canal boat, covered in pink ribbons, singing First Time Every I Saw Your Face with her youngest daughter Zoe.

The singing echoed around the vast cavern and the final note was met with rapturous applause from guests and husband-to-be Terry Woodward.

The couple left the cavern together on the wedding boat to the tune Albatross by Fleetwood Mac.

“I sang First Time I Ever Saw Your Face in memory of my mum Christine,” says Debbie, of Dalwood Close in Coseley.

Husband-to-be Terry says he loved every minute of the wedding.

“Before the ceremony everyone was saying to me ‘where are your nerves’ but I was really looking forward to it,” says Terry, aged 41. “Debbie had done most of the organising for the wedding – but I came up with the idea for the pork pie wedding cake.

“Most weddings follow the same format and you can often forget what happened at each different one – but no one is going to forget this and at least I will be able to look back and laugh at the photos,” added Terry who wore a grey suit for the wedding and a 1960s hippy outfit for the reception.

Best man was Philip Palin, who works with Terry at Deben Transport in Aldridge.

The ceremony was followed by a reception in the Black Country Living Museum’s village where wedding guests had the chance to have a lesson in the Victorian school, ride on the fair or watch an old film.

But most people filled the Bottle and Glass Inn to enjoy the Holden’s and Banks’s beer while singing around a piano.

Debbie’s daughters Emma, aged 26, from Shrewsbury and Zoe, 20, who still lives with her mum in Coseley, said it had been perfect.