Note gratefully received from Ernie Warner, October 2025:

‘Our wedding day is 28 December and Mary wanted to bring a bouquet of mistletoe [Viscum album], but the vicar forbade it because of pagan connections.

Our wedding was on 28 December 1989, at Minster Abbey, on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent.  The Abbey was the ‘high church’ flavour and the vicar would not conduct the service because I was a divorcee.  We engaged the services from the next church down the road.  Morris men were not allowed to wear their bells in church either.’

Image: mistletoe growing on Crataegus persimilis ‘Prunifolia’ in the Cambridge Botanical Gardens, December 2025.