I was given less than six months to live so I planned my dream wedding
After months of suffering a dull ache in her left knee, Ellie Dickinson was diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer back in August 2021. The MRI scan revealed a grapefruit-sized tumour in her tibia (the shin bone) which needed emergency surgery.
"I started feeling like a hamster in a wheel," says Ellie, 28, a former police officer from York. "It was one thing after another. One minute, everything was normal and I was living a settled, mid-20s life. The next, I was spending every night in a hospital bed."
Surgeons replaced Ellie's tibia with a metal prosthesis and she endured nine gruelling rounds of chemotherapy.
She was left feeling "very much like a cancer patient" losing her hair and gaining two and a half stone in weight from the steroids she was taking. Despite trying to stay positive, Ellie admits she barely recognised the person she'd become.
"I hated looking like a cancer patient," she says. "I tried wigs but they were itchy. I wore headscarves but I just looked too ill."
Two years later, in 2023, Ellie began having several falls, which caused irreparable damage to her prosthetic tibia.
Then in May 2024, she received more devastating news. Her leg needed to be amputated from below the knee and she was told, she would never walk again, even with a prosthetic leg. But to everyone's surprise, after the amputation, Ellie "felt so much better".
"It was a completely free, uplifting moment," she says, as she loved not having to feel "a foreign object" in her leg anymore.
Ellie had discussed the decision with her therapist and decided it would be the best thing to do. "It felt like the easiest decision I'd made so far," she explains. "My therapist said, 'You've been alluding to this, the entire time – you just haven't been able to say it out loud."
Her plan at the time was to re-learn how to walk with a bionic leg, but just a month after surgery, doctors gave her more bombshell news. Ellie was told the cancer had spread to her spine and was slowly paralysing her from the waist down. She was told she had less than six months to live and advised to bring forward her wedding date, which was originally planned for April 2025.
Ellie threw herself into organising not one, but two wedding ceremonies to take place in November 2024 – one intimate day with just 26 guests and another huge, dream wedding eight days later.
"Moving the wedding forward was a massive distraction for us – it was something to focus on," she says. "Me, my fiancé Max and the rest of the family were in denial about the news – we couldn’t understand it because I felt and looked so well."
Her husband-to-be proved to be a pillar of strength, pushing his own feelings aside to focus on supporting Ellie.
"Max is quite good at dealing with difficult situations and has protected me from what’s really been going on with him," explains Ellie. "I’ve been sheltered quite a lot from his feelings."
Their first wedding ceremony took place on 14 November in a York registry office with just 26 guests. Ellie wore a simple, white dress and they had a three-course meal in York Museum Gardens afterwards.
"Because it was November, everything was set up to look really Christmassy," says Ellie. "We only had 26 of our very close family members and friends there. We arrived in a taxi and kept it very simple."
This was followed by a far more elaborate affair on 22 November, which Ellie describes as a 'fairytale wedding'. Knowing she may have only months to live, no expense was spared and the couple splashed £23,000 on their special day, this time inviting over 100 guests.
She says there "wasn't a dry eye in the house" as she 'walked' down the aisle in her wheelchair, wearing a £2,400 gown covered in sparkles and pearls.
Ellie's six bridesmaids followed behind her, each wearing sage green dresses.
“Despite not being able to walk down the aisle, I felt really beautiful – it was a fairytale gown,” says Ellie. "It was all diamanté – sparkle and pearly up at the top with a low neckline."
"The day itself was really sunny – my dress caught the light and I felt like I was shining, I was so lucky," she adds. "I just felt uplifted and was so excited to share my special day with everyone I love."
The bride alternated between two different veils – a shorter, 'wheelchair-friendly' veil to walk down the aisle in, and a longer one for photos.
Ellie and Max were 'married' again at 12.30pm and photos were taken after the ceremony. After another three-course meal and speeches, the reception took place with a DJ, glow sticks and waiters who were then revealed to be undercover singers.
"It was such a gorgeous, relaxed day," smiles Ellie. "The singing waiters told us it was the most interactive wedding party they'd ever done – everyone was on top form."
The happy couple had their first dance to 'I Wanna Be Yours' by the Arctic Monkeys. "We also had a cannon of confetti throughout, which looked amazing," says Ellie.
The couple were determined the day would be a happy celebration, rather than dwelling on how little time Ellie may have left.
"It was a really joyful day," she says, "We were so adamant we didn’t want it to feel like it was a rushed wedding, or for people to feel sorry for me.
"I wanted it to just feel like a day celebrating our love for one another – there were lots of tears, but they were happy tears."
Ellie continues to look to the future too. "We’ve always wanted to get married to each other – we always wanted it to be a solidifying of our family and we still want to have children," she says.
"I’ve had my eggs saved so we can get a surrogate – regardless of what happens to me, we’ll all have the same name and all be a family."
Read more on weddings:
I saved thousands buying my wedding dress from a charity shop (Yahoo Life UK, 4-min read)
Bride who lost her sight asks guests to wear blindfolds so they can experience wedding as she does (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
Why do brides throw their bouquets at weddings? (Yahoo Life UK, 2-min read)
