When Thomas Cook went bust two weeks before Enniskillen man Ricky Beresford’s “dream wedding” in Cyprus, the well known football fan thought the game was up on this particular match of the day.

However, with quick thinking, the use of Starbucks wifi and the attitude of “where there’s a will, there’s a way”, he and his now wife Donna, who live in Glasgow were able to save their big day and celebrate their nuptials abroad as originally planned.

“We booked our wedding in Cyprus back at the start of the year. The wedding was due to take place on October 7 and we were due to fly out on October 2. Everything was booked through Thomas Cook in a store in Glasgow,” said Ricky.

“But in the early hours of Monday, September 23 Thomas Cook went bust,” he added.

Concerns about the financial security of Thomas Cook were first raised on Friday, September 21.

“Basically that weekend I headed off to Manchester to see City play Watford on my stag do and I had no idea if there was going to be a wedding. On the Sunday night, when I got back from Manchester, there was talk of a government bail out. At that stage all predictions were that they’d announce it in the early hours of Monday, that Thomas Cook had went to the wall,” shared Ricky.

Eight days before Ricky and Donna were due to fly out to Cyprus and exactly two weeks before the wedding, they found out that Thomas Cook had ceased trading.

“I set my alarm to get up at 4am on the Monday morning because I had a feeling that if it all went pear-shaped that there would be a supply and demand and prices would go up,” explained Ricky, adding: “I opened like a dozen browsers on my iPhone before I went to bed, I went to bed early and got up at 4am and right enough they had announced at 1am that they had gone bust.”

Determined not to let their dream die, after leaving their kids off to school on the Monday morning, Ricky and Donna went straight to their local Starbucks to use the coffee shop’s wifi to rebook everything. Having to rebook their flights, hotel and wedding, Ricky and Donna had to fork out an additional £1,000 on top of the original cost of their wedding, leaving the couple considerably out of pocket. Fortunately the couple managed to book flights with EasyJet which at the time of booking, only had 11 seats left on that particular flight out to Paphos, Cyprus.

“We had to fly from Edinburgh, originally we were flying from Glasgow so we had to hire a seven-seater to take us all,” said Ricky, which was another unplanned expense. “Eventually we got everything sorted and we got out there. Our new wedding co-ordinator Elena Kaourou from ‘Complete Weddings’ in Cyprus saved our lives, she was just fantastic. She’s a local woman, born in Paphos who’s knowledge and understanding of what it takes to make your big day perfect was simply fantastic,” shared Ricky.

As originally planned, the couple got married on Monday, October 7 at the same location but two hours earlier. “The day went well. We did have to end up switching where we had our reception but we went to a beach club which was just amazing. It was right on the beachfront and we had an amazing party,” said Ricky.

When asked if their wedding lived up to their dream after all the issues due to Thomas Cook, Ricky said: “Without question, it was exactly how we’d planned it.”

He continued: “Donna and I had always wanted to marry abroad, we’d always wanted a private intimate wedding with just immediate family, it was just more down to where there’s a will there’s a way. The reality is when we woke up on Monday morning we had nothing, nine months of planning gone, just completely gone and we were eight days away from going and thankfully the Wifi in Starbucks is top notch,” he added with a laugh.