It was a double day to remember for two couples as wedding bells rang on a major milestone for the family.

Following in her parents’ footsteps as she walked down the aisle, Patricia Turton married Scott Fraser in the same Carlisle church as her mum and dad.

Not only that, Patricia, 48, and Scott, 49, tied the knot on her parents’ Gerry and Mary Turton’s golden wedding anniversary.

The couples, who both live on Linden Terrace, Harraby, Carlisle, decided to combine the 50th wedding anniversary and wedding with one big celebration last Saturday.

“That seemed the appropriate date,” said Patricia.

“We would have had to had a party for their 50th wedding so why not have a big party?

“It saved having two parties,” said Gerry, 71, adding with a smile: “The wedding expense was quite enough.”

And as if that wasn’t enough romance, Patricia and Scott are actually long lost lovers from a holiday romance back in the 1980s, which was only rekindled when Scott contacted her on Facebook three years ago.

The two met when Patricia and a friend went to Portrush in Northern Ireland on holiday in 1987.

Patricia and Scott kept in touch by letter and a year later she returned to see him again but after a while the romance fizzled out.

They didn’t speak again for 24 years, when Scott managed to track Patricia down on Facebook.

“He’s still the same person,” said Patricia.

“Older looking right enough but he was still the same person.

“Lots of things have changed. He had kids, I had kids but neither of us have been married.”

Over the last three years, Scott has travelled back and forth to Carlisle and the two have fallen more in love than ever.

At a New Year’s Eve party this year, he grabbed the microphone at midnight and asked Patricia to marry him.

Months of preparations led to Saturday’s wedding at St John the Evangelist Church on London Road, Carlisle.

Patricia said: “I was a bit nervous going into the church, thinking, ‘What am I doing in front of all these people?’.

“But after five minutes in there I was having a ball.”

Patricia was not the only one who felt nervous.

The day brought back lots of memories for her dad Gerry who said the church hadn’t changed much since he married Mary, 70, on August 6, 1966.

He said of the two services: “They were very similar to be honest.

“Different vicar of course, the one who married us is probably long gone and is now sitting at the right hand of God.”

Gerry and Mary met in Carlisle in 1962, while he was in the army training at Hadrian’s Camp.

After they married in 1966, they had a wedding reception at the nearby Harraby Inn.

After Patricia and Scott tied the knot, their 120 guests were invited to the Pinegrove Hotel on London Road, Carlisle, for a party.