On 28th March 1938 Mum and Dad got married. They married in a registry office in contrast to Aunty Mary's wedding a few years later which was a much bigger affair with everyone in morning dress.
Grandma & Grandpa on the right of the picture
I am not entirely sure why they went for a registry office wedding which would have been unusual at the time, other than that they didn't like fuss. My maternal grandmother didn't attend, apparently because she didn't think Dad's family were good enough, the Tookes being more working class and the Blacks more middle class. My father never forgave her for this and it was one of the things he spoke of following my mothers death.
courtesy of wikipedia
After the wedding the reception took place at Pinoli’s Restaurant (page 9 on link) in Wardour St Soho just down the street from where Dad was working at British Gaumont.
“Wardour-street is long and narrow, like a strip of film … Listen to the men walking away from one of the private cinemas hidden in the gaudy cliffs of offices, where they have seen a new drama on a six-foot screen: the life of the street swirls past them quite unnoticed. Listen to the people in cafes: nothing but celluloid.”
It was more usual to send telegrams that cards in those days and I have a whole pile of them!
There are no photos of the wedding as having used Dad'syounger brother Eddy, a keen amateur photographer, to take the official photos disaster of some kind or other struck and the photos were a write off.
Wedding over and with a night spent at the Strand Palace Hotel (for which they paid the princely sum of 16 shillings) and a show taken in, the young couple set of for their new adventure. Running an hotel at Sandown on the Isle of Wight.
I think it important to note at the point that this story was pieced together from various snippets of information let fall by my parents over the years. It is almost certainly one of several possible versions of events and other protagonists would have had different perspectives.