Zanzibar Wedding Reception

My parents' wedding, on Friday 18th January 1940, took place in Zanzibar cathedral but, as I wrote in the blog entry in which I described that day - link here - the wedding photos followed at the reception at Mnazi Mmoja, just to the south of Stone Town.

What I had forgotten in that post was that my mother's album contains a photograph of the reception tea party at the McElderry's house....

....which some forty people attended. The group on the left-hand table are the same as appear in the wedding photograph, namely....

....clockwise from my father at left, Molly McElderry, Father Weigall, Margaret McElderry, bridesmaid, John McLellan, best man, SBB McElderry, who gave my mother away, Sir John Hall, the Resident, and my mother.

Now that I have these people right, I would love to know who the other 30+ people were. In her writings, my mother mentions so many people she knew in Zanzibar, and this picture will include some of her and my father's closest friends. Further, as a keen letter-writer, she kept in touch with many of her Zanzibar friends over the years, both in East Africa and in the UK, so I might even have met some of them.

My thanks to Mark Gimson, one of the McElderrys' grandsons, for tidying up the third photo.