CLLR Alison Margaret Eden and Cllr Andrew Keir MacGregor are engaged to be married and attended St John the Baptist, Bishopsteignton for the first reading of their Banns on Sunday.

‘It’s a wonderful tradition going back hundreds of years that a couple’s intention to marry must be announced at the start of morning service, on three occasions, so that the local community have an opportunity to say the marriage cannot go ahead for legal reasons,’ says Alison, whose father Norman Brand and grandparents Frank and Dorothy Brand worshipped at St John’s in the 1970s.

‘My father’s side of the family are Catholic and my mother’s side are Scottish evangelicals and missionaries,’ says Cllr MacGregor, explaining how much it means to the couple that they can be married in St John’s.

‘The view through the plain glass window at the nave, through which you see the trees, now in their spring glory, moving in the breeze, makes me feel so lucky to be alive and to be here, it actually feels a bit miraculous,’ says Andrew.

The couple lived within 10 minutes walk of each other in Oxford for 10 years, even going to the same pub, the Butcher’s Arms, but did not meet until Andrew arrived in Teignmouth at New Year entirely by accident.

‘I’m so happy that my booking to stay in Exeter was cancelled last minute,’ says Andrew, whose rescuer, local musician David Haines, happened to have one space left in his Teignmouth air b’n’b.

The couple have asked their close friends and family not to bring gifts.

‘I’m being very firm,’ says Cllr Eden, ‘that we want presence not presents. I am however, sending friends and well-wishers the link to donate to the church roof fund at St John’s which needs, please forgive the pun, as much support as possible.’

For more information about St John the Baptist’s Bishopsteignton see: http://haldonteam.org.uk/index.php/st-john-bishopsteignton/78-bishopsteign-church-roof