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Jacqueline and John Fletcher's Third Wedding (pic: Collect)
Standing in the church in her beautiful wedding gown with confetti fluttering all around, Jacqueline Fletcher was as thrilled and happy as any bride could be.
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Except this bride wasn’t in the first flush of love and it wasn’t the first time that she and her husband John had walked down the aisle – in fact it was the third, exactly 44 years to the day after the first.
“For most people, the prom dress once is enough, but for us, it’s three times,” says Jacqueline, 63. “But this time, it’s for keeps.”
The couple met in their home town of Penwortham, Lancashire, and when 15-year-old Jacqueline saw John, then 16, she says it was love at first sight.
“It was the turquoise and black checked mohair bomber jacket he was wearing that swung it for me – I can still smell it now,” she jokes. “We were both walking our dogs at the time so when he offered to walk me home, the dogs followed behind us like canine gooseberries!”
The couple dated for four years before tying the knot on March 18, 1967, at St Leonard’s Church in Penwortham. The bride wore a white lace dress complete with veil and heavy black 60s eyeliner.
Jacqueline explains: “The dress was hired and we couldn’t afford a honeymoon so we went to the RSPCA kennels instead to adopt a little dog that we called Suzy.
“We were taking the dress back to the shop when Suzy was sick in the pocket of John’s cream cardigan, but luckily the dress was unscathed.”
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The couple went on to have three children, Wayne, now 40, Paul, 38, and John Lloyd, 30.
Jacqueline always had one regret about their big day.
She says: “After we were married, John and I went to choose the photographs but the photographer had mislaid the negatives, so all we had to show for our wedding day was four miserly prints.
Then, in 1985, Jacqueline spotted a Valentine’s competition asking what would be her most romantic day. She put pen to paper and wished for the chance to re-enact their wedding photos.
She won and soon she was slipping into a Princess Diana-inspired frilly white lace wedding dress white lace wedding dress , with gloves and matching parasol.
“It was as close as we could get to doing it all over again,” she says.
“We had a wonderful day but, just like before, the dress was returned swiftly to the shop.”
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Jacqueline and John Fletcher's First Wedding in 1985
Then, a few years later, she was driving past St Leonard’s Church, where they’d been married, only to see it being demolished.
“I’m sure the workmen thought I was crazy when I asked if I could have the old bell tower, as that was the only thing that they hadn’t knocked down. “When I explained I’d got married there, sequin prom dresses long they told me to come back with a truck.”
Jacqueline returned home and asked John, who ran his own landscape gardening business, to take his lorry to the church.
“When I told him we were having the old church bell tower I think he thought I’d lost the plot!”
John took the four-foot tall timber tower home, where it became a water feature in the garden.
But not long afterwards cracks started to appear in their marriage.
Jacqueline had retrained as a staff nurse and worked long shifts while John helped out with the boys and ran his business.
They decided to buy a cottage in the Esk Valley, Yorkshire, as John had always wanted to live there.
Their old home was sold and Jacqueline moved alone to Yorkshire permanently with their youngest son, John Lloyd, then 14.
John stayed behind in Lancashire, to run the family business, which he was preparing to hand over to his two older sons. He planned to visit Jacqueline at weekends.
She admits: “It slowly created a wedge between us.
“John was working hard but I felt frustrated and lonely living all on my own. I missed my other boys as well as my mum, Nancy.
“I’m such a home bird that it felt as if I’ silk evening gown dresses silk evening gown dressesd lost everything and I was missing everyone.”
It went on for two years until Jacqueline finally reached breaking point.
“I told John that I wanted to geta divorce,” she says. “ sweetheart tulle cocktail dress sweetheart tulle cocktail dress;We tried to make another go of it and John moved over for a few months but by then it was too late – our marriage was officially over.”
The couple split in 1996, after 29 years, divorcing two years later.
“Everyone was stunned when we got divorced because we’d been such a happy couple – we were made for one another,” says Jacqueline.
“The kids were devastated, especially Wayne, who wanted nothing more than for us to get back together. He never gave up hope that one day we would.”
Then halter neck wedding gown halter neck wedding gown, seven years after their divorce, her sons told her that John had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. “I was quite simply heartbroken,” Jacqueline admits.
“John is the life and soul of any party. It seemed alien to think of him frail, ill and fighting off cancer.”
Jacqueline was a big support as John started his chemo and radiotherapy. She invited him over with the rest of the family to have Christmas dinner and, while he continued to fight the disease, they celebrated the festive season again a year later.
But then they received more devastating news.
Their three-year-old grandson Thomas had been diagnosed with a tumour on his kidney and was facing his own battle with cancer.
Luckily, it had been picked up early. He underwent an operation and responded well to treatment. However, two brushes with the killer disease left their mark on everyone and soon Jacqueline and John realised what mattered most – family.
“John and I had dated other people but we never met anyone who meant as much to us as we did to one another.
“With John’s cancer and then Thomas’s, it put into sharp focus what really mattered in life,” says Jacqueline. “We’d shared so much together and I never loved anyone as much I did John.”
The couple took things slowly at first, but when John had a knee replacement operation in October 2009, it was Jacqueline who stepped in again to help look after him.
“He came to stay here with me and never really left. After that, it was as though we’d never been apart and we knew then that we were meant to be together.”
Not that their eldest son, Wayne, had ever given up hope.
“All he ever wanted was for us to get back together. He used to say it all the time. In the end, he got his wish,” Jacqueline says.
The ex-husband and wife got engaged for the second time on Jacqueline’s 63rd birthday last December and tied the knot on the same date that they had first married – March 18 – 44 years later.
This time Jacqueline bought her wedding dress – on eBay.
“I bid for it, but it was too expensive. In the end, the seller took less money but I still had to diet to fit into – it was hard but worth it! On the day it was a perfect fit. Everything about the day was wonderful.”
Their wedding was held in Penwortham again, but this time at St Mary’s.
Wayne walked his mother down the aisle while brothers Paul and John Lloyd were best men and held the couple’s wedding rings.
The chief bridesmaids were the couple’s three daughters-in-law and their seven grandchildren were bridesmaids, page boys and an usher. This time, they didn’t leave the photos to chance – jr bridesmaid dresses ;Jacqueline’s sister Phillipa took them.
“Everyone played a part, which made the day even more special,” says Jacqueline. “ bridal gowns bridesmaid dresses Like Elizabeth Taylor, John is my Richard Burton. We are meant to be together and this time it’s forever. I simply can’t imagine life without him.”
John, wedding dress for plus size wedding dress for plus size 64, agrees: “As you get older, the little things that mattered before don’t seem to matter as much. It is people that count, especially family.
“Cancer has a way of dragging your feet back down to earth. We were always there for one another, despite everything, and we always will be – I still love Jacqueline and I always have done.
“We deserve each other, really. We just realised that we couldn’t live without one another.”
