At St Cwyfan's Church near Anglesey, the problems are entirely different, with guests wondering if the high tide will cut the bride off from her big day. Fortunately, Alex Spall, 48, was on time, but asked her guests to wear trainers instead of heels, so they too managed to make it safely across the sand to the ceremony.
"Luckily, when I managed to find the tide table and it had published the tide times for that month, we knew we would be fine. We knew there were some good windows for a few hours where we could make it, and we were very relieved. I think everyone was a bit surprised, really—everyone was amazed by the romance of it all and how beautiful everything was," she said. Known as the "little church on the sea," its picturesque location on a small island off the coast of Wales makes it a popular spot for weddings and baptisms.
However, its future seemed threatened at the end of the 19th century, when erosion caused some of the graves around the church to fall into the sea. St Cwyfan's dates back to the 12th century and is located on a tidal island called Cribinau, near the west coast of Anglesey.
It was built at the end of a peninsula between two bays, as shown on a map from 1636. A causeway was created so people could access the island and the church. But even with this, high tides sometimes made it inaccessible, meaning services were occasionally held in a nearby house. By the late 19th century, the building was roofless and abandoned because another place of worship had opened in a more accessible location.