Hey bridal couple, we are offering you a chance to spend your honeymoon in a shop window on a main thoroughfare over a weekend.
(Disclaimer: when I say “we” this has no connection with the New Brighton Residents Assn.)
Not interested ? What if “we” throw in a stack of inducements equivalent to ten weeks of the average wage.
Tempted ?
Duncan and Karen Sharrod were way back in June 1976 and received $l,000 ($10,000 in terms of 2023) worth of bedroom furniture yesterday in return for spending the first two nights of their married life sleeping in a shop window in New Brighton. The average wage back then was about $100 a week.
The Christchurch couple had taken part in a publicity stunt organised by the radio station, 3ZB, to promote the opening of a furniture supermarket in New Brighton.
The only incident was when some men arrived outside the window and asking them to turn the lights on so photographs could be taken. However, they were soon “taken care” of by a security man and his German shepherd dog.
The Christchurch couple, 19-year-old Karen Mitchell a Whitcoulls clerk and 25-year-old fiancé Whitcoulls truck driver Duncan Sharrod, spent 37 hours in the public eye after their wedding (two nights in a double bed in the shop window).
Karen and Duncan were wed in St Andrew’s Church, Marriotts Road, and after the reception about 9.30pm drove to the shop window, to be met with microphones and curious stares. Duncan stated: “In for a penny in for a pound” and went on to say: “It’s not much to do for a thousand bucks worth of furniture, which includes bed, mattress and base, blankets and bedding, two rungs, a coffee table and lamp.”
Surprisingly, Duncan says that he was asleep about 10 minutes later. Karen managed to stay awake for an hour or so longer, waving to well-wishers driving inattentively or walking by.
The following morning, it was breakfast in bed through the courtesy of a local motel proprietor, followed by visits from friends and many toasts to the health and comfort of the couple.
Karen said she’d been too excited to think about wedding night intimacies, while Duncan says there will be plenty of time for that later as have a holiday planned next week.
“We had Sunday pretty much to ourselves, and were able to watch television and read,” he said.
After it was all over, the couple were driven to a city hotel for breakfast as the guests of 3ZB.
The station provided “up-to-the-minute” bedside reports and unashamedly termed the project a publicity gimmick coming about after learning Duncan and Karen did not have a bed in their new flat to return to after their wedding on Saturday.
There were no reports how many beds were sold by the New Brighton furniture supermarket following this marketing ploy.
As for watching television you got ill around 11pm and then close-down and for those with insomnia there was a reality show going all night in a New Brighton retail window.