Royal wedding
Hartlepool Delivery Office helped celebrate a very special wedding last week when postwomen Nicola and Alana Palmer converted their civil partnership into a marriage.
Nicola and Alana first met in 2010 while serving on operations with the British Army in Afghanistan. Alana spent seven years in the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers – a corps that maintains the equipment the Army uses – while Nicola served for 18 years in the Royal Artillery.
‘We agreed to meet when we got back to England that October,’ said Alana. ‘I had already fallen in love with Nic out in Afghanistan. And when we returned home, I went to see her in Hartlepool. She asked me to be her girlfriend, and I've never left.’
Alana proposed to Nicola in April 2011 and they entered their civil partnership in July 2013 after both returning home from their final tours in Afghanistan. At this time, same sex-marriage was still illegal. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, which allows same-sex marriage in England and Wales, was passed by the UK Parliament in July 2013 and came into force on 13 March 2014.
‘At our civil partnership, we had our families and friends around us,’ said Alana. ‘Most importantly for me, was that my nanna was there. We had the dresses (yes, matching), the bridesmaids, and the page boys. But most importantly to Nic, a big three-tier chocolate cake! We couldn't have asked for a better day.’
In 2014, Alana left the Army to take up a career in care. After Nicola was diagnosed with combat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), she was medically discharged from the Army in 2016. She joined Hartlepool Delivery Office the same year as a postwoman.
‘I was working in a care home during the height of the first wave of the pandemic and found it very hard to switch off from my lovely residents when I left my shifts,’ said Alana. ‘I was working all hours and ended up getting the virus myself.
‘I decided then and there that I had to think of myself and applied to join Royal Mail. I was successful and started in September. Nic and I were actually half way up Helvellyn – a mountain in the Lake District – when I got the call. That was my turning point for this year.
‘When our 10-year anniversary came around, Nic proposed, knowing I'd say “Yes.” She'd booked for us to convert our civil partnership into a marriage and arranged for us to go away for the night to the same hotel where we had our civil partnership. Nic is my hero, my inspiration, my best friend, my adventure buddy and now my wife.’
Lucy Trethowan, Hartlepool delivery office manager, said: ‘Nic and Alana are both real assets to Royal Mail and Hartlepool Delivery Office. They’re two lovely, positive and conscientious ladies, and a real pleasure to work with.
‘It makes me very proud as their manager to see them celebrate their relationship with a very Royal (Mail) wedding. I wish them a lifetime of happiness.’
