Couple make hay with meadow wedding

The country-minded couple decided that they preferred rolling farm land and rural views to the formal setting of a hotel reception and took their 150 guests to a field outside Dalton Parva on Saturday (17) instead for a special wedding blessing.

Hay bales to sit on and floral displays featuring wild flowers and heads of barley helped to set the mood for the celebration, which took place just yards from the spot where Rebecca (30) and Mark (29) had met 14 years earlier.

Rebecca explained: “We first met in the field at the side of where we were.

“I kept my horse there and Mark used to ride his motorbike nearby.

“We just got chatting one day and from that point on we used to go riding together—me on the horse and him on the motor-bike.

“I don’t think many horse riders get on with motor-cycle riders but we got on really well straight away.”

Rebecca and Mark’s poignant blessing ceremony, in a field owned by a friend of Rebecca’s father, brought an idyllic end to a ten-year engagement.

Once the flock of sheep that usually occupy the site had been moved out, a marquee was erected on a platform to level out the slope of the field, off Brecks Lane, Dalton Parva.

Caterers were brought in to serve food with a rural feel—a hog roast or pie and peas were on offer—and, since the field was not a licensed wedding venue, the legal formalities had to be completed at Rotherham Register Office.

Rebecca, a beauty therapist and student assessor at Dearne Valley College, explained: “Mark and I were officially married on the Friday in front of two witnesses but the main event for us and our guests was the blessing in Dalton Parva.

“It was such a special day, the views from the field were fantastic and, because it took place where it did, we know that nobody will have the same experience again.

“After the marquee is taken down this week, the field will be exactly as it was. It will almost be like it was all a dream.”

Rebecca insisted that nobody suffered from sniffles due to hayfever on the day but it was not a totally easy-going country affair for the guests as Rebecca and Mark had a few surprises up their sleeves.

Their gentle wedding dance to the dulcet tones of Robbie Williams was cut short by a choreographed sequence mimicking Will Smith’s Apache dance from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air television series, and MC Hammer’s smash hit U Can't Touch This.

Later that night Rebecca and Mark, of Netherfield View, Dalton Parva, lined up alongside the best man and bridesmaids to perform the dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.