A BRIDE has told how her wedding breakfast at a York hotel was halted and guests had to be evacuated when a fire started in the building.

Susan Sayer, neé Dove, said that – still in her wedding dress – she had to leave the Best Western Pavilion Hotel in Fulford with her new husband Simon and 50 guests, to congregate on the pavement outside.

She said they waited in the sunshine for about 75 minutes while firefighters extinguished the blaze in an upstairs bedroom, which had been started by light reflecting off a mirror.

Then, having earlier left their meal after consuming only the soup, they returned to start on the main course and finish the meal.

Susan, 27, formerly of Lawrence Street and an ex-Archbishop Holgate School pupil, praised staff at the hotel for their professionalism in dealing with the fire, which was reported in The Press yesterday.

“They were brilliant”, she said.

“They were very good at keeping us informed of what was going on throughout. They were really apologetic, but couldn’t have done anything about it. It certainly made for some good photographs with the firefighters. Of course there were plenty of comments about how it should have been my hen party!”

She said the fire broke out in a bedroom above where she and Simon, 26, a former Joseph Rowntree School pupil from Haxby, had earlier been married.

Susan’s uncle Keith Brown, who was taking the wedding photographs, switched to taking pictures of smoke billowing from the upstairs room, evacuated guests and the firefighters.

He said another larger party, celebrating a golden wedding, also had to be evacuated and gathered in the car park. He also praised the way staff handled the incident.

The hotel’s general manager, Sean Battles, said the fire had been a “one in a million” event, which appeared to have happened when low level sunlight bouncing off a mirror struck a chair in a bedroom, causing damage to an area around the chair.