When Best Mate's grandparents married, the witnesses were two males whose names I did not recognise. I looked for them on the censuses, and discovered that they were two small boys, who I assume happened to be passing the church at the time. They had no apparent connection to either family.
Having read plenty of Victorian novelists, often the children of clergymen, who obviously had little knowledge of the mechanics of the marriage ceremony, I wonder whether the bride and groom always knew that there had to be witnesses?
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The chestnuts cast their flambeaux
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