Bride walks down the aisle with a black eye

London: A spat with her wedding caterer turned Bernadette McGibbon into a bandage-bride, as she walked down the aisle sporting bruises and blushes she received in the pre-wedding scuffle.

McGibbon married her lover wearing an ivory gown, flowing veil and sunglasses to hide the marks she got as a result of a brawl with her wedding caterer.

The fight was triggered when the would-be-married couple visited caterer Joyce Miller at the home of her boyfriend, Kevin Forster and Miller told her the money had been spent and there would be no buffet, said Bernadette.

She spent the morning of her wedding day in hospital after her retina was ruptured and walked down the aisle in St John’s Methodist Church, in Sunderland, sporting ten stitches in her face.

"We are disappointed with the outcome but that’s the way it goes. It didn’t spoil the day, I just got on with it and didn’t let it spoil the wedding,” the Sun quoted her, as saying.

However, in the court, Miller has been claiming that she was very much willing to prepare the food for the wedding, which she was planning to prepare in the morning. She insisted that she had already stored items like plates and trays in her larder at home, but it was not searched.

Forster, 39, told the jurors at Newcastle Crown Court, that he got involved in the fight just for self defence after the enraged couple turned up at his door.

He also said that he had no idea that Miller had been paid to do the catering, and did not know the couple when they turned up at his door and got into the scuffle just to save her own butt.

"I thought they were going to kill me, honestly I really, really did. I could see anger in their eyes, rage, I was fighting for my life, and that is the honest truth. If I didn’t do anything the two of them would have left me on the sitting room floor lying in a pool of blood and that’s the truth,” he told the jurors.

Forster said that after the fight got over, his place turned into a "butcher’s back yard,” but said: "I was just sticking up for myself in my own house."

The court cleared him of causing grievous bodily harm to the bride and assault causing bodily harm to the groom.