My name is Catherine Loring. I am 60 years of age, turned 60 last year.

I have been active the majority of my life. I've enjoyed walking. Last year I climbed Scarfell with my two daughters. The year before with my younger daughter and my brother, did Snowdon. I've enjoyed walking in the Lake District and lived in Yorkshire for a while so did quite a bit of walking over there. So yeah been an active person.

Youngest daughter was due to be married at the end of September, it was then informed that it would be the best option to bring the um... [blessing] forward. So that was arranged within two days by my youngest daughter. So she organised everything. Absolutely fantastic. 

I was at that time and I am now in a wheelchair. So I really wanted to be with my daughter and son-in-law, even though they still have to go for the legal bit, I really wanted to sort of say my little bit to them. So it was a great joy for me that they were able to support me as I stood and read what I wanted to read and that they can then keep those words, should they wish to, of course. That was a real blessing for me to be able to do that.
What was the greatest, greatest blessing for me was, I have four grown up children, four members of the family, and two granddaughters and again they all came together within two hours. So the whole family were there and to see Anna in her dress, which I hadn't seen, well, I blubbered!  You cannot look at your daughter’s wedding dress… I hadn’t been there when she chose it, that was a very special moment as well.

But to see and Anna and Josh. I mean, they've been together for a while, they're so compatible, they work really, really well together. So that's a real blessing.

It's a really odd thing and it’s... I'm not sure how to put this across, but out of sadness and everything else, joy can come. Joy can come. We had the celebration within the grounds of the Hospice. A wonderful place to have, it was just magical, absolutely magical. 

It was really, really special as well that only my son, my eldest son, and myself, like fruit cake, everyone else eats sponge. So I thought, well, it's a day for the family so you need to have a fruit cake, so everyone else disappeared, did what they needed to do, came back and said kitchen’s have organised a fruitcake for you! How special was that? How special was that? I mean, the whole day was so, so special.

I just can't explain how much we enjoyed it. We had the grandchildren, my two granddaughters and they were running around and playing. One is just over one and the other one is four and just to see them playing around, that meant a lot to me as well. And to Anna as well, she was happy to see me looking… I don’t know if radiant is the right word, happy and content and just being a mother of the bride and having a little blubber as mother of the bride. So that really, really went well. So that was a very, very special day.