A NEW bride is praising a charity which ensured she and her partner married in the weeks before he died following a battle with cancer.
Vicky Jackson-Williams and Ben Williams, from Parr, have been together for eight years and planned to have a long and happy life together.
However, in October 2023 Ben was diagnosed with bowel cancer and started chemotherapy.
But in January complications meant that what time he should have had was going to be cut short, leaving the couple wanting to marry.
Mum-of-two Vicky, 40, said: “I’ve been married before, to me at that point marriage is just a piece of paper and didn’t mean anything.
“But when doctors can’t discuss with you how serious the condition and prognosis is for the person you love because you aren’t married it changed everything for us.
“We knew we loved each other and it felt right to get married to make sure we had that security and to officially become married to each other, no matter how long he had left and we knew his prognosis wasn’t great.”
Long before Ben’s diagnosis, Vicky had heard of the charity Gift of a Wedding, which contacts venues and suppliers to provide a wedding to people with life-limiting conditions.
After Ben’s condition deteriorated Vicky contacted the charity again and on March 15, just days after first getting in contact with Gift of a Wedding, Ben and Vicky were married at Mercure Haydock Hotel.
Ben had two best men, Darren Garnett and Mark Mortimore.
Mark got in touch with the Star to share the story.
He said: “The morning before Ben's stag do he was unfortunately taken into hospital as his illness worsened so this was cancelled, the next time he left the hospital was to attend his wedding.
“He attended in his dad’s wheelchair and it was a beautiful day. The charity did that for them both and we are all so grateful.”
Vicky added: “We wouldn’t have been able to get it all organised in time, but Gift of a Wedding sorted everything, we only paid for everyone’s food. The rest from dresses to the venue and everything was thanks to them.
“All these suppliers donated their services for free, the videographer had the video over to us within days, we got to celebrate being married – even though it wasn’t for long.”
Ben died on Friday, April 5 at Willowbrook Hospice aged 45, with wife Vicky at his side alongside his family and friends.
Vicky said: “Ben and I had a special day, a day we celebrated with everyone thanks to Gift of a Wedding, BBC Morning Live videoed the day too so that actually aired on Monday [April 8] and we got to see the clip before Ben died so that was lovely.
“I think it’s so important to raise awareness of charities like this, they gave us a day we could not have imagined so quickly and just in time.”
A JustGiving page has been launched to help raise funds towards funeral costs.
To donate go to justgiving.com/crowdfunding/vicky-urbanowski
To watch the BBC Morning Live programme featuring Ben and Vicky’s wedding, go to bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001y42k/morning-live-series-6-08042024
For more information on Gift of a Wedding, go to facebook.com/giftofawedding
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