Frank & Nina’s story

Frank and Nina Jacques have a proud place in the history of St Ann’s as the first couple thought to have celebrated their wedding here.

It is almost 40 years since we hosted their reception so that Frank’s mother Florence could attend. She was a long-term patient at the Heald Green hospice and too unwell to travel to the city centre to see the couple tie the knot at Manchester Registry Office on March 23, 1976.

The formalities were then completed in front of Florence in the hospice chapel before she sadly died four years later aged 66, some 20 years after she was diagnosed with bone cancer.

Here they both share their story and experience of St Ann’s.

There were a couple of mishaps on the wedding day which made the occasion even more memorable. The seam split all the way up the back of Nina’s dress and a nurse had to spare her blushes on the men’s ward with the loan of her pinnie. A pal of Frank’s who offered to take the wedding photographs forgot to put film in his camera so sadly there is no photographic record of their big day.

The couple generously donated the money for their honeymoon to St Ann’s to help the fundraising appeal to build the hospice at Little Hulton which opened in 1979.