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Barming couple Susanne and Colin Westmancott are celebrating their Golden Wedding today.
They married 50 years ago in Herne Bay and have spent all their married life in Kent, first in Ditton and since 1980 in Maidstone.
They pair met in Canterbury in September 1970.
Colin was working in the same accountancy firm as Susanne’s father and they got talking one morning after Colin’s car broke down.
The following weekend Colin met Susanne and her parents in a café in Canterbury on a shopping trip and they hit it off.
Susanne was struck by Colin’s "relaxed demeanour" and they went on a date a few weeks later to the cinema.
It was on this date that Colin summoned up the courage to inquire: “Would a girl like you marry a boy like me?” which he followed up less romantically with: “Would you mind giving me a lift home?”
Clearly his car hadn’t been fixed by that point.
Just six weeks later they were engaged, and were married on June 12 the following year at a ceremony in Herne Bay.
The couple moved to Ditton towards the end of 1971 and started a family.
Through most of his career, Colin, now 82, worked for Maidstone Borough Council, although before that he did have a spell at the Midland Bank (now HSBC).
Susanne, 77, trained as a nurse and midwife at Pembury Hospital in Tunbridge Wells and worked in various roles as a community nurse and midwife, a district nurse, and caring for residents of care homes across Maidstone and the surrounding area.
They have long worshipped at Maidstone Baptist Church and, more recently, Allington Baptist Church.
They brought up three sons, Benjamin, Oliver and William, who will be joining them with their families, including eight grandchildren, for a socially distanced gathering to celebrate their golden milestone on Saturday at the Redstart pub in North Street, Barming.
