Fort William Blackening Parade

On Saturday 19th, Fuze Ceremonies hosted a Wedding Traditions parade along the High Street of Fort William to raise awareness for the Fun, Frocks & Fundraising event that they are holding on Saturday 26th April, also in Fort William to raise money for Lochaber Hope.

The parade consisted of a wedding march from the south end of the street and was headed by the Lochaber Schools Pipe Band. Our stand in Bride and Groom, Scott and Cheryl looked great as they walked down the street together, I’m sure many of the spectators believed that they were actually getting married, followed by the amazing Lochaber Hope volunteers shaking collection buckets and handing out leaflets.

The wedding march is an old tradition where the bride and groom walk to the place of their marriage, followed by their wedding guests in pairs. Bringing up the rear were 2 people with brooms made of heather sweeping the path behind them. The symbolism of this is that the heather brooms sweep away their footsteps so that the fairies cannot follow the bride and groom and bring them bad luck.

When the procession made it to the other end of the High Street a large crowd had formed-they were waiting to see the next part of the parade, which was the traditional ‘blackening’ of the bride and groom. The ritual of covering brides and grooms in treacle, soot and flour used to be carried out to ward off evil spirits. In our case we replaced the soot with seaweed that Anne had collected fresh from the shores in Arisaig that morning. Cheryl, our beautiful bride volunteered to take part in the blackening but due to the fact that we didn’t want to ruin Scott’s kilt we had a stunt double Peter step in. This was great fun and lots of children and adults all got involved to throw the disgusting concoction over the two volunteers to make sure they were well and truly ‘blackened’. The two then posed gracefully for pictures – and many tourists were even asking for pictures with them.

The next wedding tradition that we had was a scramble for the children. A ‘scramble’ involves a handful of coins being thrown around the time of the bouquet toss intended for the children to collect. The children that were there really got stuck in to the scramble and all were rewarded with some money to take home for their piggy banks.

The whole afternoon was a great success. The weather was beautiful and everyone was on high spirits and willing to get involved. Now we have next Saturday to look forward to (April 26th) for our next fundraiser for Lochaber Hope – Fun, Frocks & Fundraising. 

This is sure to be another great day out for all. Get your tickets here and come along and help a great local charity Lochaber Hope.

Contact jodie@dev.fuzeceremonies.co.uk for more info.