Many a bride-to-be has begun an emergency fitness regime in an attempt to fit into her dream wedding dress.

But for Julia Osborne the battles in the gym are aimed at simply getting her to the ceremony.

Mrs Osborne, 52, paralysed from the neck down by a fall in May, hopes to be fit enough to marry her fiance Ian Thalmessinger at Tunbridge Wells Register Office in October.

A school administrator at the Cornwallis Academy, Maidstone, she has been treated at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Buckinghamshire, after falling into a coach stairwell during a school trip to France on May 16.

Since then, Mrs Osborne, from Matfield, has gradually regained movement in her limbs.

Mr Thalmessinger, a chartered accountant, said: “She is expected to be there for another three months, but we hope they will let her out for a few days for the wedding.

“She is working hard in the gym, in physiotherapy and in the hydrotherapy pool, but it’s a long process.”

Mrs Osborne was handing passports to pupils as their coach approached the Eurotunnel in France when the vehicle took a sharp bend.

She was thrown backwards down the stairwell, suffering compression fractures of two vertebrae.