Runaway bride, meet bomb threat groom. A man from the U.K. has been locked up for a year for staging a bomb hoax on his wedding day, in the hopes of preventing his bride from realizing he hadn’t filled out all the legal paperwork yet. The Guardian reports: “Neil McArdle, 36, had forgotten to fill in the necessary forms but could not face telling his fiancée, Amy Williams, because the wedding was ‘all she talked about’ Liverpool crown court heard.”
McArdle’s in-laws grew suspicious when, after wedding venue St. George’s Hall was evacuated and checked by emergency services, they discovered no reservation had been made. According to McArdle’s lawyer, he only noticed the paperwork on a wedding to-do list the night before, and by 4 a.m. his fiancée was already up and in her wedding gown. “She looked amazing,” the lawyer said. “He just could not get out the words to her to tell her what he had not done in relation to the forms.” So he went down to a pay phone and made the call that ultimately bought him another year of bachelorhood. The couple has stayed together, a decision they’ll both have time to think over while he’s in a jail.
