Wedding ruined when bride and groom kicked out by strangers

Marriage now on rocks

By Anna Giokas



The nightmare started when Sharon Shelley and her groom Philip Dunne discovered on their wedding day that a dreadful mistake had been made in sending out invitations.

When half their guests didn’t show up, the manager of the British pub where the party was to be held tried to be helpful by inviting regular patrons to the party.

The newly-invited wedding-goers started eating all the food, and then kicked the couple out of their own party.

The couple had just finished their civil ceremony at Sutton Register Office and then went to The Plough, in Gander Green Lane, Sutton, UK, for their reception.

"I wore a white dress and the ceremony was beautiful. My mum said it was like a fairytale," said the tearful bride.

Philip and Sharon had invited about 40 guests, but on arriving at the pub found they found there were only 15.

Many of those invited were exworkmates from Philip's old job at Asda, in Beddington Lane.

He left about six weeks before the wedding and sent all his old work friends invitations, but not a single one showed on the day.

Sharon said: "We had so many phone calls that evening from people saying that they wouldn't be able to make it, and my family had come from Southampton and had to leave before tea time, so although we had said 40 there were a lot less."

The Plough provided a DJ and a spread of food for £150.

Things started out well, but when it was clear that there were not going to be enough guests buying drinks to make it worth closing the pub for the evening, an argument started.

The pub invited in a group of regulars to make up the numbers and pub staff told them to help themselves to the food.

Unsurprisingly, the row escalated and about 45 minutes after arriving the wedding party was asked to leave.

Sharon was then forced to quickly change out of her wedding gown in the toilets.

She said: "There was me, walking down the street with my wedding dress in my arms, crying, looking for a station so that we could go home.

"When we got back I had nothing in the house and I had to go to the shops to get some wine and food. I was absolutely devastated, it ruined everything."

The couple,who live in Rossignol Gardens, Carshalton, met via a telephone chat-line two-and-a-half years ago.

Their first phone call lasted eight hours and Philip proposed three months after they met.

He said: "It was love at first phone call, she moved from Portsmouth in February last year and we got a flat together.

"We are very happy and we wanted to be married."

But their bumpy start to married life has been a terrible blow.

He said: "We were disgusted with what happened. We expected to have a very, very good night and then this happened."

The couple, who never used to fight, say they have argued non-stop since the bitter disappointment of their wedding day on June 24.