A YOUNG couple have celebrated the happiest day of their life, with a helping hand from your Worcester News.

Joseph Leighton and Leanne Turner tied the knot at a hotel near Worcester yesterday after winning a wedding package worth £6,500 following a competition run in conjunction with this paper.

The prize saw them receive a full wedding ceremony and evening do at the impressive Pear Tree Inn and Country Hotel at Hindlip.

Bride Leanne, aged 24 and a legal co-ordinator for Mainstay in nearby Whittington, won a wedding dress worth up to £800 and a bridal bouquet as part of the package.

The couple were also handed an £800 photoshoot plus a three-tier wedding cake.

“It was a great day and everything went to plan,” said Joseph, 29, who works for the Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust.

“The prize has helped us so much as without it we wouldn’t have been able to afford a wedding for a long time. It’s meant a lot to us.”

Leanne, who will take her husband’s surname, walked down the aisle to the Christina Perri song A Thousand Years, with the newlyweds leaving to the Bruno Mars’ hit Marry You.

The couple, who currently live with the bride’s parents in Dines Green, Worcester, while they save for a house, are due to fly to Florida on Monday for a fortnight’s honeymoon.

“They have worked so hard to get every little detail to their wedding,” said the mother of the bride, Karen Turner. “It’s just been a lovely day.”

Almost 70 guests attended the wedding service with a further 60 invited to the evening celebrations.

Each guest table was named after a special location the couple had visited, including Snowdonia, Paris and the London Olympics, where Joseph proposed.

He popped the question on the banks of the river Thames, with the Houses of Parliament as a backdrop, shortly after the men’s 100 metre final last August. Michael Pique, the Pear Tree’s general manager, said he couldn’t wish to meet a more loving couple.

“They are a lovely couple and I wish them a long and happy life together,” he said.