Couple to celebrate 70 married years

Couple to celebrate 70 married years

Allen and Elsie Bramley will be celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary on May 25 with a big party involving family and friends.

Children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and other family members will be coming.

“We discovered that a bridesmaid and two of our flower girls are still around, so they are coming, too,” says Allen, who is now 90, and Elsie 88.

Elsie and Allen Bramley on their wedding day at Wellington in May 1955, and today at their Speldhurst home.

The couple moved into a villa at Speldhurst Country Estate in early 2017. It was a chance visit to the estate on their way home from Shannon that convinced them to swap their home of 60 years in Paekākāriki for Speldhurst.

“We just had a nosey and loved it so much,” Allen says. “Of course, Debra Bishop convinced us on the spot.”

Seventy years of marriage generates a lot of attention and some hot mail, including congratulations with pictures of the King and Queen, the governor-general, the prime minister, and minister for seniors, which have pride of place on their dining room table.

The couple have had busy lives. Allen was a builder and Elsie worked as a waitress, as well as doing time at several Paekākāriki shops, until she decided to buy the local fruit shop, where she worked until the owners retired.

They were 18 and 20 when they were married at the Wellington Methodist Church in Taranaki Street, but had met years earlier.

Allen grew up in Plimmerton and Elsie in Johnsonville. Elsie worked in a Lambton Quay café on Friday nights and during school holidays, and at the age of 14 she first spotted Allen lurking in the cafe’s doorway.

“I wasn’t interested at that time,” she admits.

She remembers that some time later a local chap offered to take her to the movies, but she changed her mind before the appointed time.

“I had just knocked off work when Allen came along. We wandered through the streets, talking, but I kept up the charade of going to the pictures with the other bloke. Of course Mum soon figured out I never saw the movie, so she was not impressed.”

The pair agreed to meet the next day.

“Mum thought he was very nice but before she let me go out with him he had to front up to her.”

They married after Allen finished his apprenticeship as a builder/carpenter.

Elsie had their first child at 21 when they had bought their first home. Allen went into partnership with a friend in 1968, and worked mostly on the Kāpiti Coast. Initially they lived in Plimmerton, later moving to Paekākāriki.

Elsie says she worked as a waitress and “just about every shop in Paekākāriki, including tearooms and the grocery shop, then the fruit shop for 15 years”.

Allen says she came home one day and said the fruit shop boss was retiring and she’d like to buy the shop. They did just that. He still recalls getting up early twice a week to buy fruit at the Wellington markets at 4am.

After retirement for both of them they took a campervan around Australia.

They say it was the best 15 months of their lives, waking up in the morning not knowing where they’d end up or what the day would bring.

Both say they believe one secret to a great marriage is getting to know each long before taking the plunge.

“We have been happy,”Allen says. “Of course there were issues, but over all I believe we were made for each other. Neither of us ever changed our minds about it.”

The Bramleys had two daughters, one of whom they lost four years ago to cancer. The other daughter lives in Taupō. They have five grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild – all but one girls.