Wedding celebrations on Yarmouth snails
GET me to the snails on time! There was no dilly dallying on the way for Cobholm couple Julianne and Mac McCarthy whose sunshine wedding went ahead under the watchful eye of giant colourful characters.
GET me to the snails on time! There was no dilly dallying on the way for Cobholm couple Julianne and Mac McCarthy whose sunshine wedding went ahead under the watchful eye of giant colourful characters.
Although the real ceremony was in June they chose the Joyland funpark as a venue for their second happy hitching for the benefit of their good friends who could not make it first time round.
Having dressed in their wedding weeds and chinked champagne glasses the couple added some fun pictures to their wedding album - poking their heads through picture-postcard cut-outs - before enjoying an ice-cream on the pier.
The seaside attraction - which will celebrate its 60th anniversary next year - was full of local flavour and goodwill with passers by getting into the spirit of the occasion.
Mr McCarthy, a drummer/singer with popular local band Monkey Spanner, said it was the perfect location to celebrate their marriage with guests Bob Cushing and Christine Bradnum who both had links to the historic ride.
As well as enjoying the ride as children Mr Cushing's Creative Sign Company had been involved in restoration and Mrs Bradnum's father helped to build it.
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Meanwhile the newlyweds - both Facebookers - were spurred-on by a group on the social-networking site called I've Been on the Yarmouth Snails and Survived where people from all over the world post their memories and experience, helping it to gain cult status.
Mr McCarthy said: “We could not have picked a better day. People really got into the spirit of it. We had been trying to do it all summer and it all came together at the end of a really mad week.”
A spokesman for the Cole family who have owned the attraction since it was built in 1949 said they were delighted to help the couple celebrate on the snails.
Only one original remains from that time, but all replacements are made to a fibre glass mould taken from the genuine metal-beaten article.
The snails are one of nine rides at Joyland, with the tubs - also built by the Coles - recognised in 1986 as the last remaining of their kind in the world.
Stripping down all the rides takes around three and half months each year when they are tested and repainted.
The spokesman said nostalgia was the key to affection locally and further afield with generations of children having been taken by their parents and grandparents who in turn, were now taking their youngsters there too.
Joyland is open until November 2.