An Oxford love story: From a College disco to a 50th wedding anniversary

Wedding season is upon us and has coincided with the end of Trinity term, a time when our latest graduates might be reflecting on the saying that you leave Oxford either with a First, a Blue, or a Spouse. Pembroke alumnus Paul Carvosso and LMH alumna Phyl Carvosso certainly managed the latter. Having met at a disco in Brasenose Cellars in 1971, the couple were married in Pembroke Chapel on a snowy April day in 1975. We were delighted to have them back exactly 50 years later this April to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary!

Paul shared with us his recollections of his and Phyl’s wedding and their recent anniversary celebrations which you can read below. 

I matriculated at Pembroke in 1970 to read Greats under the tutorship of Godfrey Bond and Peter Cuff. Phyl, my wife, matriculated in 1970 at LMH where she read Modern Languages under the tutorship of Pamela Currie & Joan Crow. (LMH was of course an all-women’s college at that time). We met at a disco in Brasenose Cellars in October 1971, got engaged at the start of my fourth & final year in September 1974 and were married in Pembroke Chapel at 1pm on Saturday 5th April 1975 (with a reception held in the College Hall).

We celebrated our 50th Wedding anniversary with a lunch for 40 people at 1pm on Saturday 5th April 2025 in the Forte Room. Exactly 50 years later, to the minute!

It snowed in light flurries on the days leading up to our wedding in 1975, but we were blessed with unseasonably warm and cloudless weather for our anniversary. On both occasions the college looked glorious, and we were proud to show it off to those guests who were unfamiliar with Oxford. The gardeners of both eras should be equally proud of their work. The quads, the window boxes and the floral borders justify Pembroke’s reputation as one of the prettiest colleges. 

Apart from the obvious addition of the Rokos Building and the far more welcoming Porters’ Lodge, the visible changes over fifty years are relatively minor. No ivy now in the Chapel Quad, lots of Bumps and Head of the River successes recorded in the Old Quad, a few additional sculptures and monuments to Tolkien, Johnson and others, better signage, no staircase nameboards and more rigorous access security.

Unlike many of my contemporaries, I had the pleasure of living in college during my second and third years. I had a room at the top floor of The Alms Houses in my second year and shared a room with Robert Farquharson at the top of Staircase 1 in my third year. Neither is a student room any longer, the one being allocated to one of the dons, the other to college offices, as I understand it. 50 years on, both staircases seem far steeper than they were, a salutary reminder than I’m no longer the gazelle-like youngster I once was!

Phyl came from Co Antrim and apart from the obvious attractions of marrying at Pembroke, we were concerned that the political situation then, at the height of “The Troubles”, might deter many of our guests, who mostly lived in England, from travelling to Northern Ireland for a wedding near Belfast. A sad and perhaps forgotten memory of those days.

At the time, one could not get married in the Chapel without a licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury, so we had to visit Lambeth Palace a couple of months beforehand to manage the legal processes and to satisfy the Church authorities that we, and the college, were suitably equipped for the ceremony of Holy Wedlock!