Two big days..

Victoria, 24, and Stephen, 26, of Georgian Close, exchanged their vows on Thursday as Joyce and Sam Weller looked back over sixty years together.

Victoria commented: "I am really close to grandma and grandpa and they are getting on a bit, so it was important for them to be at my wedding, so it was the best thing for us to get married on their wedding day. I thought it was a good idea."

Grandparetns Joyce and Sam first met in a post office, and for him it was love at first sight.

"It was very romantic," he said this week.

"I was in the Royal Air Force and I came back on special leave because my parents had died. I wanted cigarettes, because I missed them in the forces, so my uncle I was stayng with told me if I went to the post office, the young lady down there would help me out. She has helped me out ever since."

Sam, now 98, was born in Brixton and worked in Scotland Yard as a civil servant before he was called up during the Second World War. Joyce was born in Stood, and grew up in Wainscot, a village near Rochester.

I was a village girl...a country bumpkin," said Joyce, who is 89.

"He was a Londoner...It was a good mixture - somebody who knew life and somebody who didn't."

Joyce had thought she would never marry, but changed her mind within a month of knowing Sam, and they married at Chatham Register office. They settled in Wainscot for a while before moving to Frindsbury, where she became subpostmistress. She gave up her work when son Robert came along, and later daughter Janice, and concentrated on raising her children. Sam had resumed his career in the civil service, and the couple moved to Bexhill approximately 30 years ago - they now live in Cooden Drive.

Janice, who lives in Wentworth Close, hoped yesterday for a lovely day for both couples, young as well as old, and said: "This is a generation removed, so it's a combination of two different events, two different ideas, and two completely different generations."

Victoria wore a strapless dress with boned bodice and flowing skirt, and carried ivory gerberas with red roses. She organised for Joyce to have coloured fuchsias to carry and for Sam to have a double rose buttonhole, both with diamonds sewn in as a surprise. The ceremony was attended by immediate family, including Victoria's twin brother Pete, wife Sabrina and son Theo, plus close friends, and the couple are holding a "massive" reception in Venue M, George Street, Old Town Hastings.

They will enjoy a honeymoon next year and have already started planning the trip.