YES, May 17 offered up a different kind of wedding.

On a sunny afternoon among just 44 close friends

and family, my daughter Jane Catherine Kendall

Allison married Haydn Whitfield on the picturesque

lawns of The Old School House of 1876 at Rawdon

Island, upstream from Port Macquarie.

There were no bridesmaids. No best man and

groomsmen. No church service (a celebrant did the deed). No long waits for the reception, either, since

marriage and party took place at the same venue.

No dancing, but plenty of time for everyone to talk and catch up. And no late night.

That's what the kids stipulated when the Redhead and I talked them out of eloping as they didn't want a big fussy ceremony. Call them shy.

Jane and I arrived at the reception centre in a firetruck red, 1937 Dodge hot-rod, a $50,000 bare metal restoration job that any bloke would admire. Especially a bloke like me who once owned a restored 1939 Chev found on blocks with 130 miles on the clock in 1954. It was garaged by a Digger who went off to fight the Japs and never returned. But I digress.

It was obviously an emotional day for the Allisons, even though Jane, 26 in September, and Haydn, 30, had been going out for 11 years and been living together at Shelley Beach in their own home, for three.

The wedding of a daughter is not an everyday event.

Well, not in our place, anyway, thank goodness.

I not only walked Jane down the ''aisle'' (a rosebud-

strewn passage between chairs facing the Hasting River), but was also MC and second-string photographer.

When the reception house owner, Patty Cust, gave me an original school bell to ring to draw the attention of guests to speeches, the toast, the cake cutting, coffee in the lounge room, etc, I was amused. But like a kid with a new toy, I was up and down for hours ringing that bell.

Jane's in-laws, Maureen and Ewen, who also live in Port, have been rock solid in her support. With us in Sydney, they've been surrogate parents, with no task, no effort too much trouble. They've been terrific. Painters, decorators, landscapers, plumbers, tilers, builders, they've done it all for the kids. Not to mention emotional counselling and financial advice (Maureen was a book-keeper and handles the business affairs of Haydn and his mate, Aksel Ingersole, who are carpentry subcontractors).

As I write, the newlyweds are honeymooning on

Lord Howe Island. A quiet destination for the quiet

Whitfield couple.