NO-HEADLINE

LETTER

Marriages made in...Central Park

"Queen for a day" (18 March), your evocation of a Neapolitan wedding extravaganza, rightly recaptures the one I chanced to see in Napoli last year - bravissimo! As a former New York vicar having performed more than 500 weddings in 40 years, may I answer the question posed "Where will our imaginations lead us?"

I can vouch for the delight of performing weddings in Central Park, with the reception in a nearby penthouse; in a back garden next to Norman Mailer's home in Brooklyn Heights, with a view of the Statue of Libery and Brooklyn Bridge; onstage after the fall of the curtain in a Broadway theatre for two actors in the cast; on NBC's Tonight Show to wed Tiny Tim and Miss Vicky (with an audience of 40 million); and in an east side townhouse with well-armed enforcers on guard for the mafioso Joey Gallo wedding - when they forgot the marriage licence, I had to resist all threats to forget it and go on, until an enforcer was despatched to find it.

reverend william bell glenesk

Harrogate, Yorkshire