A COUPLE who tied the knot in the Vale of Glamorgan's first ever 'hippie wedding' – or 'freak-out' as the guests called it – are celebrating 50 years of marriage this weekend.

Roger and Sue Grocott, now aged 70 and 69 respectively, were married on September 30, 1967, in a ceremony reported on in the Barry & District News at the time due to its unusual nature.

After holding the wedding at a registry office in Cardiff, the revellers returned to The Ship Hotel in Barry for the reception where the "flower people" partied to the sounds of the newly launched BBC Radio One, which had begun broadcasting for the first time that day.

And according to their daughter Jodi Govier, her parents love of music has not dulled 50 years on, even if their style of dress has become a little less eccentric.

"Apparently it was quite unusual," she said.

"The Vale hadn’t known a wedding like it before. All the guests were in flowery clothes, mum had a daisy bracelet on. It was all very unusual.

"They weren’t the flowers in your hair type hippies, but they did shun convention a bit, and they were real music lovers. They loved to be different.

"Knowing them I would say they wanted to shock people and do something different."

While Mr Grocott has, according to his daughter, always been well known for keeping a distance from traditional ideas and ways of thinking, Mrs Grocott had to persevere to bring her family around to the idea of a 'hippie wedding'.

"My dad isn’t a rules person," said Ms Govier.

"Mum used to help out at a Sunday school, and he used to wait outside for her. He’d never go in.

"She was always the one who followed convention, but dad was not like that at all.

"I think she was excited by the fact that they were going to do it differently, and the fact that she’d managed to talk her parents round to the idea after a little while. I think she quite likes not going with the flow."

Guests at the Ship Hotel reception ran up a drinks bill of £46.14 on the night, equivalent to around £585 today.

Fifty years on, the Gladstone Road couple will be celebrating the occasion this coming weekend with another 'freak out' with family and friends, in a night that promises to share the spirit of their wedding day, if not the attire.