Real Weddings

You Had Me At Hello: Frank and Gloria Mizzi

“I was struck by his looks,” says Gloria Mizzi candidly of the first time she spotted her then husband-to-be. “He was extremely good-looking.” Frank Mizzi smiles and nods silently, agreeing that Gloria’s looks also caught his eye first, but being eight years her senior, he wasn’t giving it as much thought as she was the day they first locked eyes on a bus.

“It was 1956, and a group of us were going on a picnic to Ghajn Tuffieha, which is something we did a lot in those days,” says Gloria. “We used to rent a bus to take us there, and we were waiting to collect the last few people who hadn’t turned up. The bus started moving, and Frank arrived just in time. That was the first time I saw him. After picnics, we used to go dancing in St Paul’s Bay, at the West End Hotel, and I obviously wanted to go this time in the hope that he would ask me to dance, which he eventually did. I was terrified of going home that night as it was later than I was allowed to stay out.”

Gloria says the first time they met left a greater effect on her than it did on Frank, probably because she was only 16 years old. “I was still in school, and I suppose it was quite an age gap for those days, but love is blind,” she chuckles. Frank, seated beside Gloria on their sofa, lets out a quiet laugh – “cradle snatcher”.

The couple were an item for five years before tying the knot on 26 December, 1961 at St Gregory’s Church in Sliema, followed by a reception at the Phoenicia Hotel, when Gloria was 22 years old. During that time, however, Frank was away for two years, at a stretch of one year at a time on scholarships, and once he had settled back in Malta, getting married seemed like the right thing to do. “I don’t remember him ever proposing,” says Gloria matter-of-factly, and Frank agrees that it was based on mutual consent.

“My mother planned the entire wedding. I didn’t mind as I just wanted to get married” says Gloria. Frank adds, “things were simpler then – you ordered the invitations, booked the hall and catering, and that was that. We got married in December because I was a teacher and had no choice but to get married during a holiday period. I was also an officer in the Territorial Army, and exchanged vows in full uniform.”

Gloria’s wedding dress was made by her mother, using silk taffeta fabric she had bought from camilleriparismode, and decorated with handmade lily of the valley flowers on the skirt and headdress. She was accompanied by one bridesmaid dressed in a dusty pink dress, and her niece and nephew, Sabrina and Mark, as flower girl and page boy. “I enjoyed the whole wedding,” says Gloria, “but coming out of the church was a beautiful moment for me, walking under the raised swords of Frank’s army colleagues.” Frank says that, while his nerves got the better of him that morning, he somewhat managed to get into the swing of it, “although I kept thinking that the sooner I am out of this the better,” he jibes.

After 53 years of wedded bliss, two children and five grandchildren, Gloria and Frank say that their relationship has worked based on love, respect and meeting each other half way. “You must respect the identity of the other person,” she says. “I might be a romantic, but I believe that if you love each other, you make it work.”