Beaming bride follows extremely unusual family tradition for five generations

27 September 2023 , 20:02

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Katy and Jack got married this month (Image: Family/Solent News)

Beaming bride Katy White tied the knot in the same village

as her parents, grandparents, great grandparents and even great, great grandparents all married in.

Katy and Jack Cullen, both 35, wed at the 13th century Church of St Peter and St Paul 37 years after her mother and father married there, 61 years after her mother’s parents, and 84 years after her great grandparents. The night before the wedding, Katy and one of her bridesmaids also stayed at the house in which her grandparents have lived for decades.

Grandfather Michael Snellgrove, 81, a retired builder who was born in the village, then walked her down the hill to the church. Flowers from his garden were used for the floral arrangement’s and Katy’s mother, 57 year old Tracy, said the theme of the wedding was My Granddad’s Garden as she considered it a special place.

Michael, who has won a silver-gilt medal at the Chelsea Flower Festival, grew extra roses and orchids for the occasion. He had married childhood sweetheart Anne, now 79, at the church in September 1962 when she was just 18 and the couple never left the picturesque village King’s Somborne, Hants.

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Michael and Anne Snellgrove’s big day (Family/Solent News)

David and Tracy White’s ceremony (Family/Solent News)

Tracy then married David, now 59, at the church in August 1986, at which point she moved a few miles down the road to nearby Romsey. Michael’s parents, Louisa Vaughan and Charles Snellgrove, had married at the church in 1939 and his grandparents married in the church before that.

Katy and Jack originally dated for a couple of years as teenagers but went their separate ways and he moved to the Channel Islands before they reconnected on social media a few years ago. She then moved to Sark four years ago to be with her future husband but was determined to return home to wed earlier this month.

Mother-of-two Tracy said: “She always wanted to get married in King’s Somborne church because I got married there, my mum got married there, she was baptised there, and it holds a really special place in her heart. It was lovely. We tried to keep everything as local as we could. Katy looked back through my photo album and my parent’s photo album.

"She wanted to see what the comparisons were, because it meant so much to her to be married there and she wanted to mirror some of the images and photographs taken. It was a beautiful day. The weather was fantastic and it was everything we could have dreamed of. Katy was thrilled to have wed in the same church as us and her grandparents, and my parents were proud as punch.”

Adam Aspinall