StoryPromptWedding day questions to ask your grandparents
"How did you two meet?" has been asked so many times the answer comes out word-perfect. These questions are aimed at what's underneath it.
Every family has a version of the how-we-met story that gets wheeled out at christenings, big birthdays and anniversaries. It's polished, it's short, and it's been told so often that asking it again just gets you the same three sentences back. What's underneath that story — what nearly didn't happen, what their parents thought, what the wedding day actually looked like once you get past the photos — usually hasn't been asked, because the polished version feels like the whole answer already.
Worth checking first: when did the wedding actually happen?
A few ordinary-seeming wedding-day details were genuinely shaped by what was and wasn't available at the time — which makes a specific date worth asking about before you ask anything else.
| Worth knowing | |
|---|---|
| Married between 1941 and 1949? | Clothes were rationed (from June 1941 until 1949) — a wedding dress that was new, borrowed, remade from something else, or shared between sisters wasn't a style choice, it was what was available. |
| Married during rationing? | Sugar stayed rationed until September 1953. Rationing-era couples could find themselves using a mock cardboard-and-plaster tiered cake in place of a real one, with a smaller cake hidden inside it. |
| Married in the Church of England? | Unless they married by licence, their banns were read out in church on three Sundays in the months before — in the parish where each of them lived, as well as the church they married in if that was somewhere else. Ask where, and who was sitting in the pews to hear it. |
How they met
How they met
- 01Where were you, and what were you actually doing, the first time you saw them?
- 02What was your very first impression — and did it turn out to be right?
- 03Who spoke first?
- 04Was there somebody trying to set the two of you up, or did it happen on its own?
- 05How long was it before you knew this was different from anyone else?
- 06What did your friends think of them, early on?
- 07What did your parents think — and did that matter to you at the time?
- 08Was there a rival, or a near-miss — someone else it nearly was instead?
- 09What did you do on an evening out together, before you were officially a couple?
- 10Is there a version of how you met that's become the 'official' story — and is it actually true?
The wedding day itself
The wedding day
- 01How long were you engaged before the wedding, and who proposed — and how?
- 02What was your dress like — new, borrowed, or made over from something else?
- 03Who paid for the wedding, and was that ever a point of argument?
- 04What went wrong on the day that nobody talks about now?
- 05Who wasn't there that you wished had been?
- 06What was the weather like, and did it matter?
- 07What did you eat at the reception, and where was it held?
- 08Did you go away afterwards — and if so, where, and how did you get there?
- 09What's one detail from the day that's never made it into any retelling?
- 10If you could change one thing about the day itself, what would it be?
Settling in together
Settling in together
- 01Where did you live first, and whose decision was that?
- 02What could you afford in that first year, and what couldn't you?
- 03What was the first serious disagreement you had as a married couple, and how was it settled?
- 04Did living together change how you saw each other?
- 05What did you learn about them in that first year that courting hadn't shown you?
- 06Is there anything you wish somebody had told you before the wedding, rather than after it?
“Tell me about the first place that was properly your own. What could you afford, and what couldn't you?”
That question sits in the bank right after the two that ask about meeting a partner and the best advice anyone gave about marriage — the three run together as one stretch of the year, rather than being scattered through it. None of the three assumes a marriage happened, and the meeting question offers an explicit alternative for somebody who never settled down with anybody, which matters when the answer to "how did you two meet" is going to a parent or grandparent who didn't.
StoryPrompt sends one question like these by email every week for a year, and whatever comes back — a paragraph, a page, a single line — collects into a typeset book you can download at any point. If the wedding story is the one thing you actually want on record before it's gone, writing the answer down today, from the list above, works just as well without buying anything. Questions to ask your grandparents has the fuller hundred-question list this page sits alongside, and how to record your parents' life story covers what to actually do with the answer once you've got it.
One question a week, for a year — £25
Written for a British life, including how they met, the advice they were given, and the first place that was properly their own.
See what £25 includes