A terminally-ill father married his partner of 14 years so his daughters could be bridesmaids and his son a page boy before he died of brain cancer.
Pete and Jody Bromley, from Macclesfield, say they had always planned to get married but ‘life got in the way’.
In June, Pete, 57, started feeling unwell, suffering from a low mood and headaches.
At first the couple thought it was depression brought on by lockdown, but when the courier’s hands started to twitch and his coordination was off, they started to fear the worst.
Blood tests were initially inconclusive, but a scan in July confirmed he had an inoperable brain tumour.
On August 31, the couple tied the knot at a fairy tale wedding, before the father-of-three’s condition could worsen.
After 14 years together, Pete and Jody Bromley tied the knot at a surprise ceremony in August – a month after the father-of-three was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer
Pete underwent a four-hour surgery to remove a malignant tumour in his front lobe. But a stage 4 glioblastoma in the centre of his brain was declared inoperable by doctors
They said their children Molly, 11, Ollie, eight, and one-year-old Paisley loved the big day.
Mrs Bromley, 36, said: ‘From about the age of five, our eldest daughter would nag Pete saying “daddy when are you going to marry mummy?”‘
‘We’ve always wanted to get married but life just gets in the way.
‘One year I thought ‘do we get married or do we go on holiday?’
‘We only had enough money to do one and I thought it’s selfish to get married and spend all of that and one day when we could go away for two weeks with all of the children.
Jody, pictured with youngest daughter Paisley, said her and Pete wanted to get married ‘as soon as possible,’ after his diagnosis, ‘before he deteriorated any more’
Pete and Jody say their children Molly, 11, Ollie, eight, and one-year-old Paisley loved the big day
‘We started saving up again and then we had a little baby a year ago so it got put on the back burner.
‘When Pete got ill both of us wanted to get married as soon as possible before he deteriorated any more.’
Friends and family in Macclesfield, Cheshire, helped the couple to exchange their vows by raising almost £5,000 for the surprise ceremony which they organised for the couple.
The pair first got engaged in 2017 after constant questions from their kids about whether they would ever get married.
But the loved up couple had always put getting married on the back-burner – until they received the devastating news in July this year.
The parents, who met while working in a pub together, finally exchanged their vows in front of around 30 guests on Bank Holiday Monday in August.
Concerns grew for Pete, pictured with his daughter Molly, after he got lost in Scotland for 13 hours while out on a fishing trip
Friends and family in Macclesfield, Cheshire, helped the couple to exchange their vows by raising almost £5,000 for the surprise ceremony which they organised for the couple
Pete and Jody met while working together at a pub and got engaged back in 2017 – but say ‘life got in the way,’ of planning their big day
Jody added: ‘I never expected people to be so kind and to do this for us, but I couldn’t have asked for anything better.
‘It was the best day of all our lives and it meant the world to the children to finally get their wish to see their parents get married.’
Pete, who worked as a courier, started to feel different in June and claimed he felt really low and down, with Jody initially suspecting it could be to do with isolation from lockdown or the stress of their young baby.
But when Pete’s hands started to twitch and his coordination was off, the NHS clinical support worker grew concerned that it was neurological and even suggested that it could be a brain tumour or stroke.
In July blood work tests were inconclusive, but when Pete fell out of bed the mum-of-three took him to A&E and demanded a brain scan which confirmed her worst fears.
Jody said: ‘He kept saying he was really down and felt really low and he kept getting headaches but we just thought he had depression due to being isolated.
Pete, 57, watched Jody, 36, as she walked down the aisle to marry him at a surprise ceremony on August 31
Pete’s oldest daughter Mollie (centre) used to ask her parents when they would be get married
‘My brother offered to take him for a fishing trip with our son, which I thought was a great idea but he ended up getting lost in Scotland with our little boy for 13 hours.
‘They had to phone the Scottish police and when they found him they were both safe but Pete had driven 200 miles away from where they were fishing.
‘I thought he might have had some kind of breakdown but then I noticed that he started twitching with his hands and his coordination wasn’t right.
‘I started getting very upset and told Pete ‘this isn’t you’ I wondered if he’d had a stroke and I even said to him ‘what if you’ve got a brain tumour?’
‘One night he fell out of bed and I decided to take him to A&E and insisted that we needed a head scan because I could tell it was neurological.
‘The results came back and the doctor just said ‘I’m really sorry, you are right, it’s a brain tumour.’
‘I asked him to be as honest as I could be with me, I said ‘is Pete going to die’ and he just said ‘yes’.’
When Pete, pictured with baby daughter Paisley, started to feel low, him and Jody put it down to lockdown and dealing with a newborn
Thanking friends and family, Jody said the big day was the ‘fairytale wedding we had always dreamed of’
Pete was transferred to Salford Royal specialist brain unit where he was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma in the centre of his brain – an aggressive and inoperable brain tumour and another malignant tumour in his front lobe.
The devastated dad underwent a four hour surgery to remove the tumour from his frontal lobe, but medics could only offer radiotherapy and chemotherapy to slow the growth of the tumour in the centre of his brain.
After doctors suggested that he had just a matter of months left to live, the dad, who also has four other children from a previous relationship, insisted it was finally time to tie the knot with his true love.
Jody added: ‘You never think that it’s going to happen to you but when life throws you an awful curve-ball like this it puts everything into perspective.
‘On his hospital bed I told Pete I wanted him to be able to dance like nobody was watching and that’s exactly what we did.
‘It really was the fairytale wedding we had always dreamed of, I can’t thank all our friends, family and people that donated enough.’