Wedding day fire drama for Thatcham couple

There was no time for pre-wedding jitters on the morning of 25-year-old bridegroom Gary Young’s marriage to Jemma Turner, aged 28, after a blaze started in his flat in Roman Way shortly after mid-day and less than two hours before he was due to say his vows.
Inside the flat was the wedding party’s suit tails, shoes, shirts and cufflinks, as well as the couple’s pets.
Shortly after Mr Young had gone to collect the wedding flowers a fire started in a dehumidifier in the bathroom. When he returned to the flat with his best man and brother, Steven, thick black smoke was pouring from the windows.
The two men rushed upstairs to save the dog Diesel, and wedding suits before calling the fire brigade. Mr Young managed to put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher but said: “There was just so much smoke. I either had to put the fire out or the building was going to burn down.
“If it hadn’t been my wedding day I probably just would have left it [to wait for the fire brigade].”
The wedding suits were saved but destroyed wedding shirts meant the bridegroom’s mother was sent to buy emergency replacements before the wedding party headed to the Elcot Park Hotel, for the two o’clock ceremony, with Mr Young knowing he and his bride-to-be’s home was in one piece but severely smoke damaged with blackened walls and ceiling.
Miss Turner had been told of the fire but said afterwards: "I was quite shocked when I was shown pictures of it, but walking down the aisle made me completely forget about it.” Mr Young and a friend had to leave the wedding reception as the meal was being served to move their other pets, a bearded dragon and a snake, from the smoked-out flat to Your Pets in Midgham for recovery.
The pet shop agreed to store them as the fiat’s electricity had been knocked out and the reptiles needed warmth.
Mr Young said that when they returned, they were sitting down to their main meal while everyone had started on dessert.
His wife said: “I had to go around and tell everyone that my husband hadn’t done a runner and that he was coming back.”
Following the wedding, the newly-weds, former pupils of Kennet School, Thatcham, spent a couple of days in Cornwall and hope to go on a proper honeymoon later on after having to spend their honeymoon funds on repairs.
Mr Young said: “It was only once we had a couple of days away that we realised it was quite a serious situation.”
Mrs Young’s father, Michael Turner, of Mount Road, Thatcham, led the clean-up operation at the flat and said that almost everything inside had been ruined by fire and smoke damage and would need replacing.
He thanked local companies including Dreams and Carpet Right, of Newbury, who came to the rescue by offering discounts to help the couple to pay to re-furnish the flat, because of the circumstances surrounding the fire.
He said of the couple: “They have been saving up for it (the wedding) for two years. I’m just so proud of the way they have handled it.”