The Wedding

Head teacher Rachel Hassall took all her schoolchildren along to watch her write her own lines...on her marriage certificate.

During the last six years she has watched her little charges from Morley Hall Preparatory School get ready for the school register day after day.

And yesterday it was the turn of "Miss" to deal with a different register - and she took them all with her.

And it was a case of 'I Must get Married' - not 100 times, but emphatically at least once.

And so the only way to achieve her ambition was for the 50-year-old head to close the school, so she could hurriedly tie the knot with long-suffering fiancee Michael Bowater.

In the end, Rachel was watched by 37 pupils and eight members of staff from the school and nursery at the Derby Register Office ceremony in Royal Oak House.

She and her fiancee Michael, 44, a director at the school, went to the Market Place civil ceremony and took the staff and pupils with them.

Newly-wed Mrs Bowater, said she and her husband, who live together in Brookfield Avenue in Chaddesden, settled on a wedding date just eight weeks ago.

"We've never had enough time to get married because our lives are ever so hectic.

"Michael was planning a surprise party for me but then we thought that if the staff and children wanted to have a party that could be our reception.

"All we had to do was book the register office," she said.

Mrs Bowater said the wedding would have been incomplete for both her and husband, without the pupils being there.

"It was wonderful having them there," she said.

"The children are such a big part of our daily lives that they just had to come.

"We normally have swimming on a Friday so we kidnapped the coach and brought the children here instead."

Children aged between two and 11 years joined family and friends at the service before heading back to the school, which is in Morley Road, Chaddesden, for the reception.

Seven-year-old Rhea North said she really enjoyed watching the wedding.

"I couldn't wait to throw confetti and then go to the party," she said.

Charlie Price, also aged seven, of Oakwood, said he had never been to a wedding before and did not quite understand what was going on but had been looking forward to the reception.

Little Charlie was not the only child who was left feeling a little confused by the event.

Samantha Johnson, head of the pre-preparatory department for the nursery-aged children, said one girl had thought the coach that would take them to the wedding would be like Cinderella's.