A 23-year-old Connecticut man was apparently so frightened by the idea of holy matrimony that he faked his own death to get out of marrying his girlfriend.
Alex Lancaster, of England, claims her fiance, Tucker Blandford, led her to believe he committed suicide so he could get out of going through with their Connecticut wedding scheduled Aug. 15, the Daily Mirror reported. Their honeymoon would have been this week.
Lancaster, 23, broke down in tears when Blandford's father called her in March with the tragic news.
"He told me Tucker had been deeply depressed and wanted to die, so had thrown himself in front of a car," she said according to Yahoo! News UK.
Blandford, who later admitted to faking his death, would have gotten away with it if Lancaster hadn't called his mother about her son's death.
"She said Tucker was absolutely fine- but she also thought we'd split up," Lancaster told Reveal.co.uk. "She knew nothing about the wedding."
That's when Lancaster realized it wasn't her fiance's father who initially called her
"I realized it was Tucker pretending to be his dad," she told the Mirror. "My whole world crumbled."
Blandford eventually apologized to Lancaster via text after ignoring several of her phone calls, Lancaster said.
Lancaster fell in love with Blandford when they met during her year abroad at Connecticut University in 2012. When it was time for Lancaster to return to the U.K., she was crushed at the thought of leaving the man who treated her like a queen. Blandford asked Lancaster to marry him so she could stay.
"I said yes straight away," she told the Mirror. "I was super happy and smiling like an idiot."
Bank in England, Lancaster scraped the money to put the wedding together, spending 600 pounds ($1,000) on wedding invitations and buying a handmade dress from eBay, Yahoo! News reported. She was waiting for her finance to visit in late March before the wedding when Blandford's "father" called.
"I'm a terrible, awful person," Blandford said according to Yahoo! News. "Alex is an amazing girl but I got scared and wanted to get out of the relationship. It was moving extremely fast and with us being in different countries, it was really hard."
Perhaps there's a silver lining around what happened to Lancaster- she now has her own business making wedding favors.
