For having collected their wedding cake from a cake decorator in Wakefield - and with just 24 hours to go before they were due to get married - they discovered it was completely unusable when staff unpacked it at the hotel where they were to hold their reception.

"It was just awful. The icing was all cracked and it looked a right mess, and it would have been embarrassing to use it," said newlywed Ann Hepples.

And it was then that David Wardle who runs and owns the Jonathan David bespoke cakes and handmade chocolates shop in Epworth's High Street came galloping to their rescue. A very distraught Ann had telephoned her mother Pat Ward, who lives at Doncaster Road in Westwoodside and she recommended that her daughter look in at David's premises to see if he could help in anyway.

"She was, understandably, in a right state when she came in. Her cake looked like a cracked patchwork quilt," said David.

He was unable to do anything with their cake at such short notice but provided Ann and her husband-to-be David Hepples, who grew up in West Butterwick, with a three tier dummy cake and changed ribbons so that it would fit in with the couple's colour scheme.

The wedding in Doncaster's Earl of Doncaster Hotel went ahead without any further hitches and guests had to be told that it was a fake cake. Ann and her husband David, who now live in Parkway North, Wheatley, Doncaster, cannot praise cake maker David Wardle too highly.

"He didn't take our names or addresses when he provided us with the dummy cake. David just took us at face value and did all he could to help.""It restores faith in human kind when someone steps up to help a complete stranger in their moment of need, he didn't know me from Adam and could have just put the phone down on me saying they don't do that kind of thing. Instead he did everything in his power to make it all alright for us including free coffee and chocolates while we waited," said Ann.