While Emmerdale’s Laurel has been hiding booze in the washing machine and secretly pilfering bottles of wine from the pub, Charlotte Bellamy, who plays her, has revealed she’s been keeping a secret of her own.
In 2012, she married her long-term partner Mungo Denison in a low-key ceremony watched only by their children and their mums.
The couple, who met in their teens, didn’t tell their kids, sons Sunnie, 10, and Herbie, eight, or five-year-old daughter Teddie until the day itself.
“We didn’t invite anyone or tell anyone, we just did it and it was perfect,” Charlotte told Mirror Online. “We sat there at breakfast and said to the kids, ‘We’re getting married today’ and they were like, ‘What?’ It was hilarious.”
The family then popped down to their local register office where their mums acted as witnesses at the ceremony.
“We did it on a random Thursday in May 2012,” says Charlotte. “It was a beautiful sunny day. There was no fuss and no stress, it was great.
“For some people a big wedding is the dream and of course that’s great but it wasn’t really our style. We’re quite unconventional.
“I texted my friends at the end of the day and just said, ‘Me and Mungo got married’ and they were stunned. They just laughed, they thought we were bonkers but they loved it. The weird thing is so many people have said to us, ‘I wish we’d done that’.”
The wedding, however, isn’t the only secret that Charlotte’s been keeping for the past three years – she stole a pair of shoes from Laurel’s wardrobe to go with the £60 dress she bought for the nuptials!
“I got a £60 dress from a shop in Notting Hill. It’s a striped cocktail dress with a big bow on the front,” explains Charlotte. "I didn’t have any navy shoes to go with it so I borrowed a pair of Laurel’s from work. I’ve never told anyone that so I hope I don’t get in to trouble!”
