Ware Marriage

Not a warning...a celebration! I hadn’t gotten recent news from Robert Ware, former principal of Ware Anthony Rust (WAR), the fine British ad agency and Dialogue International’s UK member.

I wrote him yesterday and he answered with a surprise: “Di and I have got married after 18 years together – a wonderful occasion at the Old Hall at Queens’ College in Cambridge.”

I’d better give you his picture’s caption before this post gets too lengthy.

PHOTO: The Ware family is a truly modern unit as it comes in the shape of a 'blended/extended' group. The picture, L2R shows Barney Ware, Kirsty Ware, Damian Drury (KW's partner), Tim Hall (son of my first wife with second husband, stepbrother of B, K &T, and brother of Emily), Diane Ware, Robert Ware, Winifred Ware (mother of RW and going strong at 94!), Toby Ware, Emily Hall (see Tim Hall), Hannah Ware (daughter of R&D).

Whew! I’m crazy fond of Winifred’s hat. That’s Old Hall in back, I guess…looks old. Diane (née Spencer) looks phenomenal.

There are many more photos, which I’ll summarize this way. Some 80 guests attended, including Graham and Jo Rust from Prague. Graham is Robert’s former partner who left WAR years ago to start an ad agency in The Czech Republic – another staunch Dialogue member to this day.

The wedding site, as mentioned above, was Queens’ Old Hall, very recently refurbished so that, according to Robert, the colors looked as new (so that's only about 500 years ago). “Quite staggering,” says the groom, “and a tremendous privilege to be able to party in such a majestic hall.”

His final quote: “And the only pagan thing about the occasion was the amount of 'liquid refreshment’ that was cheerfully consumed. This probably fuelled some of the interesting and irreverent comments to be found in the 'Wedding Book’ – a beautifully made Florentine leather-bound volume – that everyone was asked to add their bon mot within. Great fun was had by all.”

Robert has, over the years, been a terrific colleague as well as a long-distance friend. I have enjoyed Robert’s great spirits (and Diane’s and Hanna’s) on more than one occasion, not only at Dialogue Managers’ Meetings but at the Wares’ home. (We’ll leave that part of the story gracefully cloaked.) The company and the hospitality have always been heart-warming.

In addition to raising up a very excellent marcom agency just across the Cam and the Water Meadow from Cambridge’s great colleges, then leaving WAR to be carried on in the hands of an superb crew, he’s got himself officially hitched up. I’m sure that, at the very instant of matrimony, Robert said to his new bride, “Now, Diane Spencer, be Ware!”

Robert and Di, congratulations from the Republican part of Texas. I’m uncertain if the realm of British advertising will survive while you improve your golf handicap, but I wish both of you the very, very best of life.