Cancer bride Courtney Webb dies in her husband's arms just six weeks after dream wedding

Sunday People readers made her last wish come true raising £20,000 so she could marry her childhood sweetheart

Matt Sprake

Dream day: Courtney with Billy and their daughter Dolcie

The bride who fought cancer to fulfil her final wish of marrying her childhood sweetheart has died in his arms.
Courtney Webb, 27, defied all odds to walk down the aisle and make her vows to soulmate Bill – thanks to £20,000 of generous donations from
Sunday People readers.
It was the wedding of her dreams – but just six weeks into married life a rare form of cancer has cruelly stolen her from her new husband and their five-year-old daughter Dolcie.
Bill, widowed at just 27, said: “She put her head on my chest and fell asleep again in my arms just like she had a thousand times before.
“But I knew this time she wasn’t waking up. I just held her.
“I don’t know how I will live without her but I will always remember the ­happiest day of our lives and the last weeks before she was taken.

Matt Sprake

At last: Billy hugs his new wife

“I can never give enough thanks to the people who made it possible. My Courtney was stubborn, she was brave, she was strong, but most importantly she was happy and she died having done the one thing she wanted most in the world.
“I’ve told Dolcie that the angels have taken her mummy up to Heaven but I will never ever let her forget Courtney or how happy we all were while she was here.
“Courtney’s motto was that she would never let cancer beat her and even in the end she didn’t. She went on her own terms – peacefully, in the arms of her husband.
“In the end she won.”

Courtney died early on Monday morning at the family home in Erith, Kent, after an eight-year battle with cancer which began in her kidneys and later spread to her blood, liver and heart.
She’d planned to marry Billy – her ­partner of 11 years – in a big white wedding in November until doctors warned that she would not be well enough.
The money raised by well-wishers to bring the wedding forward to July proved priceless as her health deteriorated.
Now the happy memories of her final weeks are mixed with overwhelming grief for Billy and Dolcie.
Billy said: “The grief hits you when you least expect it.
“I went to bed on Monday night and the sheets still smelled of her. It was a comfort but suddenly I felt so alone.
In pictures - Courtney and Billy's dream wedding:

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“I was getting my tyre changed at the garage the other day and I felt a cold chill down my side, then I realised it was because I was singing our first dance song My One And Only by Adele . It hit me like a ton of bricks.
“The wedding was so perfect and she looked so perfect. It doesn’t make sense that she has gone so soon after.”
As well as a dream wedding, Courtney, who was forbidden from flying because of her illness, was determined to have a honeymoon.
Bill said: “We went to a beautiful hotel in Bath for a couple of nights after the wedding and she was in her element.
“It was a gift from a stranger who read about our story in the paper and wanted to give us something special.

Mirror.