When Joanna and her partner Brian booked their wedding in a stunning overseas location, they couldn’t wait to tie the knot.
The pair, from Darlington, had waited a long time to get married after meeting 10 years earlier at work.
“The first time we met was around 2006 but Brian was already married so we were just friends,” Joanna, now 41, told The Mirror.
However, years later Brian’s marriage ended and he got back in touch with Joanna on Facebook for support.
“We were just friends like before for a few months, but it developed into a relationship,” she said.
In time, the pair decided to get married and, in the summer of 2018, booked their wedding at a hotel in Paphos, Cyprus.
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But just months later, Joanna’s family received some devastating news that made her even more determined to make her wedding day perfect.
Joanna’s mum Valerie was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), a degenerative illness that slowly causes brain cells and nerve endings to stop working, leaving a person trapped in their own body.
“Months earlier she’d been out for food with my stepdad and she’d tripped - but there was nothing there for her to trip up on,” Joanna recalled.
From there, Valerie continued to lose more and more control over her movements and began seeing doctors for tests.
“Looking back when mum tripped up, the muscle was weakening in her foot and it gave way,” Joanna said. “But we didn’t know that at the time.”
But as her mum became weaker and began to rely on a walking stick, her daughter began to suspect her mum might have MND.
“A woman I worked with had just lost her husband to motor neurone disease, and she mentioned to me that mum might have the same thing,” Joanna recalled.
As her mum’s speech began to slur, Joanna said she “put two and two together” and also began to suspect Valerie had MND.
But her suspicions didn’t make Valerie’s diagnosis any less upsetting for the family.
“Mum was devastated,” Joanna recalled. “She’d already been frightened enough that she might have Parkinson’s or cancer.”
After learning her mum had two years to live, Joanna was even more determined to make her wedding day the trip of a lifetime to give Valerie wonderful memories while she still could.
She said: “I thought she would be too ill to fly, and I wouldn’t have done it. But she was so determined to be there, it was almost like she was living for it.”
For Joanna, it was difficult to see her powerhouse mother lose her independence.
“I used to say she was like a Rottweiler,” Joanna joked. “She was really fierce and worked all her life as a job coach.
“She could be brutal but at the same time she was lovely. My mother would have done anything for me.”
As Joanna made plans for her big day through The Wedding Travel Company, she was pleasantly surprised to learn she was given a wedding planner in Cyprus who sorted out almost everything for her.
While she devoted herself to caring for Valerie, Joanna didn’t have spare time to plan her wedding - and she was also wary that her mum might not be well enough to fly out to Cyprus.
“I thought, ‘I’m not going to get married without mum there’, so I warned the company I might need to cancel and they were really good about it,” she said.
Joanna added her Cypriot wedding planner made sure every aspect of the wedding catered for disabled access, as Valerie was in a wheelchair by the time the big day arrived.
Despite worrying her mum might struggle on the flight and in the hotel in Paphos, Joanna said the trip went off without a hitch.
“There were only about 18-20 people at the wedding so it was intimate, but it was beautiful,” Joanna said.
"The ceremony was on a terrace with a covered roof, but it had breath taking views overlooking the pool and the beach, with a wonderful cool breeze.
"It was the most gorgeous venue and it was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and I knew mum felt at peace.
She added that, as she said her vows, there was barely a dry eye in the house.
“Mum was in tears the whole day and that was the second time I’d seen her cry in my whole life. It was so emotional for everyone,” Joanna said.
“Some weddings can have 200 people as guests, but that wasn’t for me.”
"I wanted a small wedding where mum could be a part of it. She sat with me and I interacted with her. I didn’t want her to feel like just another guest.
“She got the holiday she wanted and got to spend it with me.”
Joanna added Valerie’s hotel even had a mechanism to allow her to get into the swimming pool, despite being immobile.
“They had one of those graduated pools so mum could get in. My brother and sister-in-law put her in a rubber ring and she floated around - she had the time of her life,” Joanna said.
Valerie passed away in October 2020, two years after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
While Joanna misses her mum terribly, she’s glad Valerie was by her side on her wedding day and that she could give her the trip of a lifetime.
She said: “Mum loved it. It was just as much about her as it was about me.”
Do you have a real life story to share? Email jessica.taylor@reachplc.com
