Those were the days! Work colleagues toasted Grimsby Minister bride and groom with bottles of milk

Whatever you do, don't spill a drop! Vera's workmates at a dairy in Scartho hold the bottles aloft

AT how many weddings have milk bottles been the props for the guard of honour?

So it was almost 80 years ago - on April 19, 1944 - at Grimsby Minster when wartime airman Bob Jay tied the knot with his sweetheart, Vera Stephenson, who worked at, yes you've guessed, a  dairy!

The wedding was held at the Minster despite its having suffered bomb damage a year earlier.

After the war, Bob worked as a fireman then at a factory on the Humber Bank. He died, aged 49, in 1974.

 The life and times of Bob and Vera, who had three children are commemorated in  a book, The Mallon Crew, written by one of them, Vic, a former deputy head teacher at Grimsby's Hereford School.

The Grimsby man was flight engineer in the crew of a Lancaster bomber piloted by New Zealander Bill Mallon.

*Pictures and information supplied by North East Lincolnshire Council

Wedding day joy at the church 80 years ago

The bomb-damaged Grimsby Minster. Was the clock still working?

The book by Vic Jay celebrates his Grimsby father and wartime colleagues