A WEDDING was thrown into crisis when the stretched limo hired to pick up the bride failed to materialise.

Fran Windsor, of Baldock, had to arrange last minute transport making her arrive three quarters of an hour late, leaving many guests wondering if she had left her husband, Gavin, at the altar.

Mrs Windsor’s sister, Naomi Fountain, had to drive her sister to the ceremony and many of the guests booked to ride in the 18-seat limo had to take taxis, which cost the couple �60.

Mrs Fountain said: “She is all right now it’s over and she is on her honeymoon but in the run up she was in tears.

“I walked into the church and said ‘she’s here’.

“The looks on everybody’s faces because they thought that she wasn’t going to come. They thought she had jilted him.

“I had to get my dad in the car and he’s 6ft 4in and he’s got emphysema.”

Mrs Windsor had booked the limo, from London-based Capital Limousine, for four hours to take the guests from her London Road home to St Mary’s Church in Hitchin and then to the reception.

The stretched Hummer was booked to arrive at 3.30pm but was seen by a friend of the couple “looking lost” near the Tesco store in Baldock at around 5.45pm.

Mrs Fountain said: “They called saying that they were seven minutes away and my mum used to run a courier company, so she knows distances.

“The people in the church had to shoot off straight after the ceremony because their parking tickets were running out.

“We have got quite a big family and some of them had flown down from Scotland and we hadn’t seen them for years.

“So we only ended up seeing them for a few hours.”

The couple were lucky that there wasn’t another ceremony booked at they church otherwise they would have had to cancel.

Mrs Fountain said Capital Limousine “had emailed to confirm in July the details of the hire and they have not attempted to phone my sister to apologise or explain.”

Mrs Fountain says she has contacted Trading Standards and hopes to recuperate the money spent on taxis in the small claims court.

Niky Somaya, Capital Limousine’s booking agent, said: “We are investigating this.

“The car had an accident and it was stopped by the police and that was one of the main reasons why the car didn’t reach them.”