Hello everyone!

My name is Andria Greaves, and I’m the senior staff writer at Pride magazine.

Pride is a magazine that’s been running for nearly 20 years, and is Britain’s most established publication for women of black origin. We have a readership that’s more than 100,000 a month, and our recent February 2005 edition sold out within two weeks. At least 20 per cent of our readers are men.

I'm interested in writing a feature, called Weddings From Hell. Because of the nature of our magazine, any stories relayed to us would have to be about weddings including a black African or Caribbean bride or bridegroom. It would be preferable if both the bride and groom were black, but this isn’t essential.

I would be more than happy to include the names of couples, organisations and places it happened, but if you would like this to be withheld, I can do this too.

It could be about anything that went wrong before, during and after the wedding, including the after party; such as the groom’s mother wearing black at the wedding, or the languages on the menu was in a different language – in other words, anything that did go wrong! You can be the best man, or just a friend who observed what went wrong.

The deadline for replies is Wednesday 09 March 2005, 5pm.

And please tell me your views about our magazine - what do you think we should be covering? What do you think is lacking? I can assure you that this response is genuine - I've already confirmed my details with the administrator on the telephoone number below.

I've always been a fan of Blackchat, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Light and Love

Andria

How about doing a spread onpositive weddings, memorable ones for the right reasons and whilst your at it a companion spread on black couples , from all walks of life who are cultivating successful relationships and lessons that they might impart to us etc.???

Suppose it doesnt make as interesting copy as WEDDINGS FROM HELL!

Im sure when it does get written I wont at all resent the fact that I have spent 4 minutes of my life reading this @%*$%!!,precious time which I will never get back.

I hate weddings with a passion! I even went on hunger strike to be sent to my boarding school earlyso i don't have to be a bride's maid at my sisters wedding..........

Would you consider including me in your article??.......since i hate this silly ceremonies! i consider them all to be weddings from hell.......smoking-devilSo i think its all fair that i should be allowed to talk about the abuse i sufered from this monstrous waste of time and money events.......

What say you dear????

hmmm people from the media doing research!!!

Weddings from Hell...well you did ask!

http://www.itv.com/news/index_2069165.html



Pope calls gay marriage 'ideology of evil'
10.23AM, Wed Feb 23 2005



Homosexual marriages are part of "a new ideology of evil" that is insidiously threatening society, Pope John Paul has said in a new book.

In 'Memory and Identity', the Pope also calls abortion a "legal extermination" comparable to the Holocaust.

He also reveals that he is convinced the Turkish gunman who shot him in 1981 did not act alone and suggests that the former Communist Bloc may have been behind the plot to kill him.

The 84-year-old Pontiff's book, a highly philosophical and intricate work on the nature of good and evil, is based on conversations with philosopher friends in 1993 and later with some of his aides.

In one section about the role of lawmakers, the Pope takes another swipe at gay marriages when he refers to "pressures" on the European Parliament to allow them.

"It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man," he writes.

The Pope's fifth book for mass circulation, issued by Italian publisher Rizzoli, sparked controversy in Germany and elsewhere after Jewish groups protested against leaked excerpts comparing the Holocaust to abortion.

In at least two sections of the book, the Pope talks about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews and the wholesale slaughter of political opponents by Communist regimes after World War Two.

In following paragraphs he says that legally elected parliaments in formerly totalitarian countries were today allowing what he called new forms of evil and new exterminations.

"There is still, however a legal extermination of human beings who have been conceived but not yet born," he writes.

"And this time we are talking about an extermination which has been allowed by nothing less than democratically elected parliaments where one normally hears appeals for the civil progress of society and all humanity," he writes.

In Germany, a leader of the country's Central Council of Jews called the comparison unacceptable.

At a news conference presenting the book, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's top doctrinal official, dismissed the Jewish charges.

Ratzinger said the Pope "was not trying to put the Holocaust and abortion on the same plane" but only warning that evil lurked everywhere, "even in liberal political systems".