Ultimate Wedding Planner star suffers secret heartbreak while filming BBC show

A contestant on the BBC’s high-profile wedding reality show had to battle tragic family news as she planned the happiest day for couples.

Yasmin Downing, from Plymouth, has revealed that she had to help arrange her beloved grandmother’s funeral at the same time she was competing with eight other hopefuls on the Ultimate Wedding Planner which launched last night.

“It was devastating when my Nan Phyllis passed as she was instrumental in my upbringing and we were so close,” says Yasmin Downing, a 33-year-old florist. 

“I should have been grieving her, but I had to put on a smile so that the bride and groom got the best.”

Yasmin was given a day off from the high-profile programme when she got the news but chose to rejoin the competition where planners take it in turns to create stunning real-life ceremonies against the clock with limited budgets under the gaze of Dragon’s Den star Sara Davies and First Dates’ Fred Sirieix.

“Phyllis was an incredible woman and meant so much to me. She’d had a fall and was taken to hospital, and I got the news before the first episode, where I have 3 days to plan a wedding,” adds Yasmin, from Plymouth.

“She was taken to a home as her condition deteriorated and she had dementia. But I managed to get some time to see her, and we have a lovely final evening together."

“I was sworn to secrecy by the show, but I had to break that to tell her. You could tell it made her happy. It was a lovely moment."

“She loved Frank Sinatra, and we sang ‘You make me feel so young’ together. She sang it to me as a kid and sadly that was the last time I saw her because I had to go and film episode 2. It was goodbye but it was a lovely goodbye for both of us, a precious moment that will never leave me.”

Phyllis, who was 87, and her husband Donald, a former dock worker who died in 2015, had been huge figures in Yasmin’s early life as her mother was a single parent.

“We spent so much time together because mum had to work so much and we’d go on holiday together,” says Yasmin.

“She introduced me to Frank Sinatra, and they would play a tape of him in their old orange Nissan as we went on childhood summer holidays."

“She loved flowers which is probably the inspiration for me becoming a florist and getting into the wedding business.”

Yasmin, who has spent time as a nightclub and restaurant manager, adds: “I went back into the show and although I knew she was ill I didn’t expect to hear that she had passed while I was planning weddings.

“I got the phone call and the team said I could take time off. I was traumatised and just spent the day in my room. I just parked the pain. Everyone on the show was lovely and messaged me.

“She wouldn’t have wanted me to waste the opportunity, so I just went back in the next day and got on with it."