A Zenith was my first SLR camera, bought when I was about 14 or 15 (so about 40 years ago). I was helping out a pro doing weddings at the weekends at this time, so I was fairly confident with a variety of cameras and flashes by then - I just couldn't afford them on my part time jobs savings...
Anyway, someone I knew told me that a friend was getting wed at the weekend and they had no one taking pics and asked if I would take a few for them. "No probs!" I said.
So on the day, down to the registry office I went, only to be told on entering that the service had already started. I was pointed towards a door and I crept in. At the signing of the book I went forward and started snapping away. Despite a few odd looks saying, "So who are you then?" it wasn't until the names were read out loud that I realised that I had been sent into the wrong room!
So, out I crept and went into the correct one. I took some pics of the couple inside along with some outside. I took their names and address and wished them well.
About ten days later the photos arrived in the post and about half were no good at all. Something had gone wrong with the shutter (which I later got repaired at almost the cost of a new camera) and only parts of a frame had exposed, with the rest coming out as a solid dark area. But would you believe it, the first set of pics on the roll of the 'wrong' wedding were fine!
Nothing I could do but go and apologise to the couple and give them the few prints that came out. (Imagine that today in the "I'll sue you!" type of world we live in.
At the address I had been given, I knocked on the front door, to be told that the couple had done a flit owing a few months rent and the lady I knew said the woman had not been coming in to work since and as it turned out, was never heard of again.
It didn't put me off weddings in later life and that was the only one that has ever gone wrong. But it gives me jelly wobbles when I hear people offering to do weddings either on the cheap or with no experience or worse still with no back up insurance in case something / anything goes wrong. I ALWAYS have liability insurance AND backup equipment just in case...
As for the Zenith camera, I later 'upgraded' to a Practica camera, which I used for about four months on a working / holidaying summer in America, where dozens of films were put through it with not a single problem. Until very recently it was used by my partner for astrophotography. It now lays in a draw waiting for an airing.
Memories eh?!?
Terry S