Seventy Years Strong: Fordingbridge Couple Celebrate Platinum Wedding Anniversary

Michael and Brenda Bourne, of Fordingbridge, will mark seventy years of marriage this August. Both are now 90, and their platinum wedding anniversary caps a life that took in National Service, decades in the police, four daughters, and an eventual move down to the New Forest.

The couple met young, as teenagers at the cinema in Seaford, East Sussex. Michael was later called up for National Service and served with the Royal Engineers in Egypt.

When he came home in 1956, he and Brenda married at St Leonard’s Church in Seaford, on 18 August. Michael went on to join the Metropolitan Police in London, while Brenda raised their four daughters.

They came to Fordingbridge after their eldest daughter settled in the town, moving into a quiet bungalow on its outskirts. All four daughters now live nearby, and the extended family has grown up around them there.

The anniversary falls on 18 August — seventy years to the day since the wedding in Seaford. Friends and neighbours in Fordingbridge are expected to mark the occasion with Michael and Brenda, long-familiar faces in the town.

Platinum marks seventy years of marriage, one of the rarer milestones on the traditional wedding anniversary list – the same list that gives 25 years as Silver, 40 as Ruby, 50 as Golden and 60 as Diamond. Couples reaching Platinum are uncommon simply by arithmetic: it depends on both partners marrying young and living long, and staying married the whole way through. The next named milestone after Platinum is 80 years, marked as Oak.