A COUPLE who were jilted by their registrar and ended up marrying twice on their wedding day are celebrating their golden wedding this week.

Former Prestatyn mayor David M Morris and wife Brenda, of Chatsworth Close Prestatyn are honouring 50 years of marriage on Wednesday with a return to their honeymoon destination of Majorca.

However, their nuptials at the former Prestatyn Seion Welsh Congregational Church - now converted into a block of flats on Victoria Avenue - on Thursday, October 3 1968 were less than straightforward, as Rhyl registrar Albert Dale missed the event after his wife took ill.

They married twice on the same day, with 150 guests having to wait for after the religious service for a replacement registrar to be arrive for St Asaph and the civil ceremony to conducted in the chapels’ vestry.

David joyfully reflected: “We were married in the chapel in the eyes of God, and in the eyes of the law in the vestry.”

David, 77, worked as a general clerk at Holywell Rural District Council, where he met his future wife Brenda Saunders, 74, who was a rates assistant, proposing in the White Horse pub in Hendre Wydd, near Denbigh.

He said the secret of their happy marriage has been: “We have always been good friends and haven’t had a cross word.”

The couple had two sons, Simon and Jonathan, and one grandson Joseph (Jonathan’s son)

David went on to work for the Central Flintshire Water Board, before ,moving to Welsh Water and eventually becoming a PR manger, retiring in 2000.

After retiring David became a Denbighshire County Councillor, a Prestatyn town councillor, and was Mayor of Prestatyn as well as church warden of Prestatyn Parish.

To celebrate, David and Brenda departed for Majorca on Saturday, September 29 where they will spend 10 days before they celebrate with son Jonathan and family upon their return.