In terms of wedding disasters, the experience of engaged couple Stephanie McEwan and Brendan Clarke was among the worst: seven days before their dream wedding, the venue they’d organised 18 months before was destroyed by fire.

It was just past 7pm last Friday, September 5, when the Loxley on Bellbird Hill, one of the Hawkesbury’s oldest and most significant wedding venues, burnt down.

More than 80 firefighters had to deal with the extraordinary flames and the added risk of venting gas bottles from inside the venue.

But from tragedy has emerged a story of hope. The couple, now officially Stephanie and Brendan Clarke, wed on Saturday afternoon in Kangaroo Valley, after spending a week frantically changing everything they’d spent more than a year organising.

Seven days to save a wedding

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