COUPLE TAKE THE PLUNGE FOR REAL TO GET WED

A SCUBA-diving Derbyshire couple have taken the plunge and become husband and wife in one of the UK’s first underwater weddings.

Lisa Huggins and Christopher Jackson tied the knot in the 864,000litre tropical oceanarium at the Bear Grylls Adventure centre in Marston Green, Birmingham.

The Jacksons, who have been together for five years, had some unusual wedding guests – including blacktip reef sharks.

The 38-year-old bride said: “We were going to get married in Cyprus, then, with Covid, we couldn’t travel, and then with guest restrictions it put a halt to everything really.

“So, for us, this was a good way really, we could keep the numbers down and do something that we love.

“We trained to be scuba divers together so it’s sort of a journey that we started on together… so getting married was just another part of that journey for us, our diving journey.”

Mr Jackson, 43, said the couple had to be imaginative after the coronavirus pandemic disrupted their plans.

“With Covid, we couldn’t get married because we were in lockdown and so on,” he said. “Then we contacted these guys here about an underwater feature because we’re both scuba divers and they said ‘Yeah, we’d love to do that’ – so here we are today.”