Doctor Who wedding pair Paul and Joanne Seymour back in the TV spotlight on The One Show
Published: 00:00, 03 October 2016
Updated: 08:53, 03 October 2016
A couple who held a headline-grabbing Doctor Who-themed ceremony to renew their wedding vows popped up on BBC’s The One Show.
Paul and Joanne Seymour, who both work on the maternity ward at Darent Valley Hospital, were invited on to last Thursday’s show after producers asked the public to get in touch with their zany weddings.
Theirs was picked to be part of the show, which included a couple who got married underwater and another who hired the Batmobile as transport with the Dark Knight behind the wheel.
Paul, 55, who has been a “Whovian” for years, said: “In July they rang to say that they wanted to include our ceremony in the compilation and that was the last we heard of it until the Wednesday when they called to ask us if we could appear.
“We’ve had a lot of feedback, all positive thankfully, and people have been stopping us to tell us they saw us on TV.
“We’re hoping that the extra publicity will help us to raise some more money for the Little Buds Fund, which supports the maternity and special care baby unit at Darent Valley.
“After the wedding we organised a sci-fi and Doctor Who event in Gravesend, which raised over £2,000.”
Having debuted in the Messenger in July 2014, the renewal of vows at St Paul’s Church in Milton Road, Gravesend, became a national story and attracted the attention of David Tennant, Peter Capaldi and Tom Baker, whom they recently met.
Speaking to One Show hosts Matt Baker and Alex Jones about the day, Joanne admitted that it was her idea. “We’d been married 30 years and I didn’t know what to buy Paul, so I thought ‘how about a Dalek?’” she said.
Paul said they didn’t do a dress rehearsal, adding: “That was problematic because the Dalek got stuck on the carpet on the way down the aisle, so we had to get some people from the congregation to actually push him.”
Back in November, we visited the couple’s Erith home to see how they had transformed their living room into their own Tardis.
It started with some redecoration to get rid of damp, but quickly spiralled to feature life-size cutouts of every Doctor, an inflatable Dalek, a Cyberman helmet, fezzes and sonic screwdrivers.
At the core of their fandom, though, is their desire to raise as much awareness and money as possible for the hospital in which they work.
n You can catch their One Show appearance under September 22 on BBC iPlayer. You can see our story of their 2014 ceremony, plus a video, at http://bit.ly/2cF63Yo
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