A Greencrafts Wedding
The Greencrafts field is more, much more than a collection of craftspeople and artisans – it’s a community and few things sum this up better than the handfasting I officiated one gloriously hot year.
There is a worldwide tradition of blacksmiths conducting weddings – the blacksmith was the top artisan of the community, the one who made the tools that the others depended on and therefore was seen as having alchemic powers, a shaman perhaps. Some years previously I had been asked to participate in the handfasting of a bronzesmith friend (another Greencrafts veteran) with his beautiful bride and had since honed a ceremony which I had performed for several coupled friends.
This pair were friends of my daughter who had already been together for ten years and as naturalists had just got a wildlife contract in the Middle East. However, their contract insisted on them being married, so they’d booked a register office for before they flew. They asked if I could give them a blacksmith’s blessing, to which my daughter responded that she was sure we could do better than that!
And that began four days of preparation for the most wonderful of celebrations which brought the whole field together on a Glastonbury Saturday afternoon.
The couple made their wedding rings for each other with one of the silversmiths, the bride found two wedding dresses at a tat stall and needing ribbons to be laced into one, was given a dangling, fine white guy rope, surplus to requirements and wafting in the wind, by another of the craftspeople on the field. Meanwhile the groom was lent a beautifully embroidered vintage waistcoat. They wrote their own moving and heartfelt vows to each other.
The cake was made in my trailer, topped by a 60s troll bride and groom found last minute at another tat stall – and was blessed by the Tibetan monks, present there that year.
The bride was pulled round the field on a handcart lent by the waggon makers, decorated by the community and accompanied by a growing procession including a forty piece choir from Lewes and a life-size puppet wolf. By the time they reached my pitch, they were a crowd of hundreds.
Thrones were lent by the woodcarvers, wild roses for her hair were found in abundance in the hedgerows, she was lent necklaces and other jewellery, and I had made their decorative initials from recycled round bar, to be forged together as part of the ceremony; a lasting keepsake of their union. There were numerous other contributions from the field to the celebrations.
The bride was given away by my sons’ good friend, the dancer of a previous tale here – and all of us were moved to tears, both those of us who knew the couple well and strangers who had randomly joined this Greencrafts magic. The two each shared water from The Chalice Well in goblets lent for the occasion, then (in those far-off, pre-Covid days!) passed this water of life among the guests. We hand-fasted them with dozens of lengths of ribbons, string and twine.
The stained glass artist made the most stunning grisaille of Glastonbury Tor for them, encasing both four leaved and six leaved clovers found in the fields, which she went off site to the cathedral glass maker to help complete, as a gift from Greencrafts family. They were lent a brand new, beautifully decorated yurt full of gifts for their wedding night.
And to top it all, they left the Greencrafts field that evening for the main stage – after all, not everyone gets the Stones to play their wedding party!
Kate The Wordsmith 