It wasn't your normal wedding photo. Most people have a lovely view, in Swansea, it's often one of the sea. But Beth and Allan Winkley preferred a backdrop of tropical plants for their image to celebrate their nuptials.
And they were so impressed at how it turned out, they went back to do the whole thing again - 30 years later - with the same photographer taking the photos!
Beth, 61, and Allan, 70, from Llewitha, met in 1988 while teaching together in Sketty Primary School. Although the couple were married at Swansea County Hall all those years ago, they decided to take their wedding photos in a rather unique venue at the time.
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"It was a February wedding," explained Beth. "We didn't want people to get cold while they waited for pictures to be taken. So we approached Plantasia to see if we could go there to have them done. It was a nice tropical heat and people thought we'd gone to some very exotic location for our wedding."
Plantasia in Swansea calls itself a rainforest zoo. It has 40 different species of animal, including marmosets, parrots, meerkats and crocodiles. It also has a huge number of exotic rainforest plants, including the bird of paradise, and weeping fig.
The pair decided to celebrate their pearl wedding anniversary in February this year by returning to Plantasia, thirty years later, dressed in the wedding clothes they got married in decades earlier. The couple even invited the original guests from their wedding day to meet for food and drink in the same pub they held their reception in back in 1993 in Penclawdd. You can get more Swansea news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
The venue was close to Beth's heart as she is a self-confessed lifelong lover of plants. Her father studied botany and Beth later left teaching to work for an environmental charity and now volunteers at Swansea Botanical Gardens.
On what inspired them to recreate the photos in 2023, Beth said they usually went on holiday to celebrate big anniversaries but when she realised they would be at home in Swansea for the celebration for the first time, she convinced Allan to agree to the nostalgic photoshoot.
"Most of the anniversaries, we've spent away because it was half-term when Allan was teaching. For this anniversary, we went away before Christmas. So, I thought, I've got the hat, I've got the dress, I've got the shoes. I've even got the sugar craft flowers off my cake, I still have the whole works," she added. Although Allan only had the tie from his original outfit, he still happily posed for the photos which were taken by his friend and photographer Stephen Morris, 71, who took the original pictures when he was 41-years-old.
After the photos were taken in Plantasia and also on Swansea Promenade, the pair went for lunch and drinks at the pub they held their original reception in, which is now the Rake and Riddle in Penclawdd. In attendance was Allan's best man who he met in 1974 on his first day teaching and other close friends and family. The couple even had a cake made which was topped with the same sugar craft decorations Beth has saved all these years later.
On their secret to a happy marriage, Beth and Allan said they both had their own hobbies and rarely spent weekends together!
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