A lovely light wrote:

If we consider that both John and Mary work, that John is a doctor, he should win comfortably to live in a bigger apartment, have a car and a quite expensive wedding. 

I tried to count how many guests are, but i am rubbish at stopping a movie when it counts. I got 7 tables with 8, 9 people on each plus the 5(?) on the main table. This is actually not so much if you think that many people come with someone and not alone (poor Lestrade).

I was also surpraised to see only Sholto visibly from his army days. The most guests seem also to be Mary's guests, not his. Apart from the spoken cousin in 221b , we don't get any of John's family. He really looks lonely. Probably because he doesn't trust people and that makes difficult to him to have loads of friends. You also lose friends and aquintance when you are depressed.

I wish we would get more to know about John's past to understand him better. For me he is more difficult to read and a greater puzzle than Sherlock (to whom i can better relate in a way and we get also much more information through his relationship with Mycroft and his parents, but also through his aquintance, who are first his - Lestrade, Molly, Ms. Hudson, Anderson ...)
 

Yes!  I feel we only have little bits and pieces of information about John's background.   One thing I wondered in another thread is why he chose to do GP training, when it doesn't seem something that suits him - as a doctor, there were more exciting fields he could have gone into.   Now that you mention it, it's odd that there's only one person (Sholto) there, from all his years in the services. 

GPs are well paid, so yes, he could afford a big wedding (I think Mary works part-time so would have been struggling financially, but she may have had money put aside. I don't know her background).   It just isn't what I'd have imagined for him and Mary.  If I'd had to guess, I'd have thought they'd have a small, less formal, registry office do, with just the people close to them, especially as they didn't have much family there.  Nobody to give Mary away, for instance. 

I know they have to get married (unlike Martin and Amanda!), because they get married in the books, but there was a choice by the people making the series to make it a showy wedding.   What I'm wondering is whether this is meant to say something about the characters (why did John and Mary choose this sort of wedding?), or whether it's really just because it looks good and to fit with the story.  The colours and lighting are gorgeous, although it seems to me that it's Sherlock who is being lit beautifully, rather than the bride!   And of course, they needed a lot of guests and a photographer for it not to be instantly obvious who the potential murderer and victim is!  

Yes, how do they afford it?  What GPs earn is quite variable - practices can be run rather like businesses.  Basic pay is about £50,000 - £80,000 which is quite a decent salary in the UK (although not enough to be rich).   I'm not sure if there would be London weighting (it's common that jobs in London pay a little more to help make up for the costs of living there).  Sherlock thinks Mary is a part-time nurse.  Full-time salary might be around £30,000, so she's likely to be on about £20,000 - below average for the UK.  Possible London weighting again.  However, she actually seems to be working as a receptionist when we see her, so would be earning less - possibly £15,000?  (I don't think the practice would employ a receptionist on a practice nurse's salary, but it's possible that the scene that shows her as a receptionist is just a misunderstanding of a nurse's role - a mistake.  Or possibly the practice have some odd triage system where the practice nurse gives a provisional diagnosis then ushers them into the doctor? I'm overthinking).

I'd have thought John would have some money from the army after retiring, but he seems to be broke (he asks to borrow money from Sherlock).   They get a huge payout in the second episode from the bank job.  I'm not sure how huge, or how long it lasted.  John wears quite expensive clothes, but could have owned them before.  Renting in London is very expensive.  They may have bought that flat, but would probably have needed a deposit - I'm guessing that they're renting for now. 

The average wedding cost is about £18,000 apparently.  Most people I know haven't paid that much, so the figure is maybe skewed by a few really expensive ones.  But John and Mary's definitely was not a cheap affair.  However, most of it could have been bought on credit and paid off later, so they wouldn't necessarily have needed savings.

But I don't think they would have got a big wedding on credit, and I'll tell you why.   Mary's pregnant.  It could have been an accident.  But John's a GP - contraception is one of his areas.  Mary's a practice nurse  - again, contraception is one of her fields of expertise.   They would likely have chosen one of the very reliable, long-acting methods of contraception, IF they were trying to avoid pregnancy.  Obviously, they haven't as Mary is pregnant.  They're not trying to avoid pregnancy - i.e. they're trying for a baby.  Some people do get married around the time they want a family, so that makes sense.   But with no savings and renting in London, I don't think they'd want to get in debt over a wedding, not if they're planning to have a child. 

So the expensive wedding is a bit of a puzzle.  Maybe Mary had a large amount of savings and spent some of them on the wedding?  It's about the only explanation.  After all, she's choosing to work part-time, so maybe doesn't need money?

Last edited by Liberty (August 13, 2014 11:12 am)

Yeah, maybe her free-lance jobs were very well paid .

It couldn't really be secret from John, though, could it?  He would wonder how the wedding had been paid for.  But if her parents were dead (are they?  I wasn't sure), it wouldn't be unusual for her to have a bit of inheritance, and that could be what she tells him.   Or maybe she really does have some inheritance.  (And by the way, I haven't watched HLV yet, so might be missing something). 

I agree that they look suprised about the pregnancy.   But of course, they might not have been expecting it yet.  It usually takes quite a while to get pregnant, and they were rather obsessed with all the wedding preparations.  But another clue is that they are instantly pleased about it - Mary has a big smile right away (unless I'm misreading that), then they are flustered, then both smiling and pleased.  If they'd been actively trying not to get pregnant ... well, it wouldn't be good news on first hearing.  

However, it does take Mary a while to realise what Sherlock is talking about, so maybe not.  I'm not 100% sure about this scene, but their occupations do suggest that they knew what they were doing on the family planning front. 

(Of course, in real life, people react in all sorts of different ways, and not the way you'd expect - but in this programme, they are more reliable and things are easier to deduce!). 

Last edited by Liberty (August 13, 2014 11:50 am)

Please let me ask you something - have you any idea of what happens in HLV? I really do not understand how you can discuss all this without the full knowledge of all episodes. Apart from the fact that we are posting constantly what must be terrible spoilers for you. There is a storytelling arc, a development throughout the episodes and you should know them all in order to draw conclusions. Of course you are free to discuss them now but I think it would be better to watch them all, especially with regard to but not limited to Mary's part in this series. 
 

I agree, Mattlocked, this revelation doesn't seem to be a happy one for them. At least not exclusively. And I suppose for different reasons.

As for the money Mary might or might not have from her previous 'occupation': She would somehow have to explain to John why she has so much money, being an orphan and working as a nurse. Would he believe that she somehow saved up a lot of money over the years? Well, maybe he would, there are other things about her he didn't see, either. And well, I guess she is skilled enough to come up with a convincing story, right? Liar and all that... 

He does not know about her past and money is never mentioned. It was just something that struck me because he was never particularly well off before. And as I said, it would have taken him some time to return to medical work, depressed as he was. Moreoever, he had not worked as a doctor for quite some time. We do not see him at work again after TBB. (Of course in the fanfics Mycroft usually helps out but there is no hint at such a thing in the series)

That's true, but I've accepted that I'm watching something that was aired some time ago.   The alternative would be to not to read or discuss anything until I've watched the whole thing, and to be honest some of it is "spoiled" anyway (I've read some of the ACD stories, and I've seen things in the press - the TRF was all over the place after it was aired, so I knew the ending all along).   I wouldn't like to actually read the script, but knowing some plot points doesn't actually spoil the experience (interesting article hereon whether spoilers spoil).  It's interesting to see how the characters get to that point.  I also have some brand new episodes to look forward to in the distant future, so will finally get the full experience!

Actually, psychologists have done studies that indicate that people enjoy books more when they know the endings, even if they believe they won't, and I believe they have gotten the same results with the visual arts. I would never spoil for people who don't want to be spoiled, but I personally ALWAYS want to be spoiled--I'm one of those people who have been reading the ends of books first from childhood, and it's never ruined a good book or show for me. (And it saves me time on the bad ones!) So I don't think Liberty will be missing anything by knowing some of the plot points of HLV ahead of time.

If it comes to that, everyone who read the ACD canon knew the end of TRF and the beginning of TEH more than a hundred years before it was even written!

We in Germany, must live under a rock to don't read spoilers till we have aired on our TV.  (I also read the end of the book when i am still not through the half of the book ). 

I think in the pic with Mary, she thinks about the telegramm from CAM and feels the danger. Perhaps John thinks how his times walking around with Sherlock is quite to the end.