TOYAH ON
CELEBRITY BRIDES
UNVEILED
2009

TOYAH: When I was a little girl I never dreamt about my wedding. I was a tomboy. All I ever wanted for Christmas and for my birthdays was punch balls, guns, tanks. So weddings just weren't on my agenda at all

In fact, I probably as I got older and got into my teens and became a punk rocker - and then got into my 20s - was quite phobic about thoughts of marriage and quite phobic about the thought of having a permanent partner and having a family. So when I did eventually get married, I shocked everybody I knew

I grew up in Birmingham, which was quite a difficult place for a girl to grow up 35 years ago. Women were forced into relationships and I felt forced into being sexually active. An awful lot of the girls that I knew their ideal was to have a child out of wedlock and get the security of a nice apartment and never get married and get a job. I hate to generalise about it, but that is the environment I grew up in

Because I grew up in that environment I was ferociously against relationships. So I got involved in punk and then in music around the age of 14. I knew that I was always going to be very different

I started making my own clothes and started to look very punky. I was very pre-punk. I was influenced by a film called The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was pre-punk. So I was walking around Birmingham with peacock coloured hair about two years before punk rock ever appeared

My husband and I should have met at least five to six years before we actually did because we had the same management company. The very first time I met him was 1983, where we shared a taxi to an award ceremony together. He sat on the front seat and I was on the backseat with my manager - our manager. He was very quiet and he had these little round glasses 

I just took the mickey out of him from the Kings Road to the Grosvenor Hotel, which was about half an hour trip. I can remember my manager just being flabbergasted that I had the guts to just provoke this man for half an hour and I'd only just met him

I didn't know that he is in the Top 10 of the world's most famous guitar players. He's a man called Robert Fripp and 1983 he was just like God in the music world. He worked with David Bowie he produced Peter Gabriel. He'd been on Blondie’s his albums - so he was a megastar. The picture behind me (above) is of me and Princess Michael of Kent, laughing at someone joking. And that someone is Robert Fripp, my husband

This is the first moment I really got to talk to him because Princess Michael wanted a photograph taken with him and me. That picture appeared in a very famous newspaper the next day with Robert cut out of it, because Robert was never really a celebrity, but I was and that was 1983 - three years before I married Robert

So we didn't meet again until two years later, when we met at exactly the same award ceremony. He said to me would I visit him at his home in Dorset and make an album with him, a charity album for children's school in America and I said yes

But what I didn't know, and this is very much how my husband works - when we met again in 1985, which would have been around June - July he'd already said to his friends in America, where he lived in New York, he said "I'm wiping the diary clean for the next three weeks, because I'm going to meet my wife". So we'd already had a kind of intuition about this
 

Then the following week after we met and had this discussion, I went down to work with him on this album for a week. He said “will you marry me?“ and “I said it was a bit quick, isn’t it?” He said "no, I know you're my wife. I've been planning this for the last month." And I kind of went "OK, well let's get to know each other"

So I actually moved to Washington for three months to the school where we were raising the money for, where he taught, because he also teaches guitar. I went there and taught drama for three months and that was our courtship

(Shows the bouquet) I still have my wedding bouquet, which is hard to believe. This dear thing is 22 years old. We keep it in our front room. It was yellow, originally. I adore yellow flowers. So we had yellow roses, yellow Carnations and then Lily of the Valley

This is probably the most expensive thing about the wedding - the Lily of the Valley on May the 16th - we're already out of season. So we had to have them brought in from Holland and it wasn't cheap. But I did a little drawing of what I wanted and a friend went along to a florist and got it organised. And miraculously, we have managed to keep it

I organised the wedding. My husband didn't want anything to do with any of those traditions other than the church ceremony. So he participated in the rehearsal. We married in St. Mary & Cuthberga & All Saints Church in Witchampton in Dorset where his father was buried, and I think his grandparents were buried

We did the rehearsal but that was about as far as it went. I bought the wedding rings, I bought the wedding dress. I cooked all the food for the wedding party. He didn't want children at the wedding. He didn't want any of my friends at the wedding but I insisted on close family

Basically I realised that it was nerves. He can't bear big events. I have never had a party since I've been married because he can't bear those kinds of events, which is unusual but bearable. So he didn't want music at the wedding. It was a silent wedding

The extraordinary thing was it was on May the 16th 1986 and it’d rained for a month but the moment we arrived at the church, the sun came out and streamed through the windows exactly where we stood at the altar

(Shows the hat) I had the veil made. My sister-in-law had to organise it so no one knew I was having a wedding veil made. That went over the front, it's very brittle and delicate. You've got to remember it's 22 years old, and this big flower went at the back. Now these are back in again today. Back then this was 1986, big things were in. But seriously that went out in the 90s big time. I suppose you would see that in Sex And The City today

We managed to have the reception with very close family. And then the precious day ended and that evening and the next day we were hounded. We were chased everywhere by journalists in cars. Eventually we drove off to a Franciscan retreat in Sand Creek in Cornwall, who hid us and we hid that for a week and they blessed our wedding

(Shows the garter) This is the garter I wore for something blue and I wore it on my left leg I think, I could be wrong. But there's only two legs to choose from. It was a gift from my husband's best friend. They had it made by a local lacemaker in Dorchester. My husband now keeps this on his desk in his office.

(Shows the dress) Because Robert and I were getting married secretly I couldn't order a wedding gown. Because I was paying for everything and basically was not interested in a huge expensive public wedding I had to really ponder of how I was going to be a bride

I thought OK, I'll just go buy a ball gown and it was really hard for me to shop at this time because I was incredibly well known. I couldn't go anywhere on my own. So I knew of a kind of debutante ball shop in a town called Windborne in Dorset. I went there pretending I was going to a ball and I bought the only ball gown that would fit me

That was a little pink organza Bo Peep dress, a family dress. I didn't want a traditional white wedding dress which was lucky. This is actually a little ball gown, very Bo Peep, off the shoulder puffball sleeves that just rested on the upper arm. Little kind of gatherings at the bottom. So it's very feminine, very pretty indeed

I think marriage is cyclical. I think everything in life is cyclical. You go through cycles. And if you can recognise those cycles, you can recognise when a cycle is dipping, and you're in a bad time and also when a cycle is lifting and you're in a good time. I think you only grow to recognise these things if you have longevity in a relationship

So seven years ago, we found the home we're in now (Toyah and Robert in 2020, above), which is just the most perfect beautiful home in the world in the Midlands. We decided that we wanted to spend more time together and travel a little bit less and just enjoy ourselves. We've worked really hard, not only as a couple, but as individuals as well. You've got to bear in mind we don't have children either so we're not fixed and one of us isn't financially dependent on the other

But we go off, we have little honeymoons three or four times a year and just lock the world out and we're just romantic. The one thing that both of us are - we are both very romantic. I love buying him gifts and I love telling him to pack a bag and (say to him) you’re going be in a warm climate. You'll be in a cold climate. Oh, don't worry, you're not going to leave the bedroom for a week. I've kind of I like surprising him and taking him on nice adventures

You can watch the programme HERE