Couple reunited with lost wedding film after 57 years
A husband and wife in Australia have been joyfully reunited with their long-lost wedding footage from Scotland, discovered by chance 57 years later.
Aileen and Bill Turnbull tied the knot in Aberdeen in 1967 before emigrating, but they never had the film from their special day.
The footage resurfaced when an old cine film was converted to DVD for a man in Aberdeen. He shared a snapshot from the film on social media, and the couple in Brisbane recognized themselves.
After watching the film again—something Mrs. Turnbull had only done once before—she expressed to BBC Scotland News that it was an “absolutely amazing” experience.
The couple married at Mastrick Church in Aberdeen in August 1967 and were filmed exiting the church using equipment borrowed from a colleague. They later borrowed a projector to view the footage but returned it without realizing the film was still inside, leading them to lose track of it.
The Turnbulls emigrated to Australia in 1981 and are now 77 years old and grandparents. Fast forward to April of this year, when Terry Cheyne in Aberdeen was having old cine footage he had filmed transferred to DVD. To his surprise, he found wedding footage he had no knowledge of.
Mr Cheyne posted a still image, taken from the recording of the happy couple, on a Facebook page but it was almost six months before a shocked Mrs Turnbull stumbled across the picture.
“I was looking through Facebook, and up came this wedding photograph. My husband was sitting here, I turned to him and I said ‘there’s our wedding photograph’.
“I messaged Terry and it just grew from there. His uncle was the guy we’d borrowed the projector from to see the film after the wedding, he worked with my husband.
“We gave back the projector, and unbeknown to us that film was still in the projector. We’ve only found that out now.
“We looked at it once, after that we couldn’t find it and didn’t know what happened to it. It must have got mixed up with something and it’s only surfaced now. Then Terry decided to try and trace this couple.”
Mr Cheyne was able to send them a link so they could watch the footage – and it brought back some special memories.
“It just seems strange for me to see my mother and my father, not just in a photograph but there actually moving and walking,” Mrs Turnbull explained.
“And my husband, he saw his grandmother and his grandfather, who was 100 when he died.
“I watched it again today, I could still recognise everybody.
“To look back and see these people was just absolutely amazing – I still can’t believe it really.
“I was just saying to my neighbours, we’ve got our wedding album, and the majority of people in that have passed away. So seeing the film was just surreal. A few of them are still with us.”
She said getting part of their wedding filmed – the footage lasts under three minutes – was “probably very unusual” at the time.
“Terry sent me the link so we could see it here, it was just so surreal.”
He posted a picture on a Facebook page, but it was when someone shared it on another page that Mrs Turnbull spotted it.
“I waited almost six months, and then Aileen said ‘that’s us’,” he said.
“When she told me she had only even seen it once in 57 years it was really a joyful moment.”
He hopes to actually meet the couple if they are able to make it over to Aberdeen on holiday.
“I’ve just been glad to help Aileen and Bill,” Mr Cheyne said. “They are delighted 57 years later. A very happy ending.”
