Wimborne couple wins Barbados honeymoon and £50,000 wedding

Summer Abrahams, 46, and Ashley Platen-Mills, 50, have won £50,000 to plan their dream wedding alongside an all-expenses paid honeymoon to Barbados in the first-ever UK Wedding and Honeymoon Awards. 

The couple were announced as the winners in Kew Gardens on February 29 with Summer commenting the couple won due to Ashley's romantic proposal from Everest base camp in Nepal. 

She said: "I didn't ever believe these things were really true or anybody really wins but I thought I'll give this one a go because all it asked for was your proposal story and mine's pretty good. 

"He decided to do something different than he normally does and trek up to base camp. His charity Adventure Aid raised £12,500 from the trip. He just felt after actually making it and there with a team of 15 people he wanted to propose. 

"As he got to the top, he had a piece of paper with him and wrote on it 'will you marry me?'."

The couple met in 2016 after both being in Nepal helping the country recover from its devastating earthquakes and began dating in 2018 before getting engaged in 2022. 

Noticing each other in the paper, with the Echo writing a story on Ashley's work, the couple became in contact and since have been happily together. 

UKWHA have given the couple 18 months to plan the wedding which set to happen in the Cotswolds. 

Summer said: "We had never made plans because our finances have been so difficult and this is partly the reason why we've won. 

"Unexpectedly, my poor mum's hip and both knees have broken so we've been running up and down to London to arrange her surgery which has cost us an excess of £60,000."

The couple had to move out of their home to help fund her mum's surgery and also delay plans to renovate their house in Lake Como, Italy, and turn it into a B & B.

The couple are extremely happy to have received help and hope it will mean they can begin their dreams in Italy sooner.