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A bridegroom has been jailed for 12 months after staging a bomb hoax on his wedding day to try to prevent his bride discovering he had failed to complete the paperwork required for them to marry.
Neil McArdle, 36, had forgotten to fill in the necessary forms but could not face telling his fiancee, Amy Williams, because the wedding was "all she talked about", Liverpool crown court heard.
Instead, as she got ready on their wedding morning, he slipped out of their house and went to a phone box. Disguising his voice, he rang Liverpool register office and said: "This is not a hoax call. There's a bomb in St George's Hall and it will go off in 45 minutes."
The call, 11 days after the Boston marathon bombing in the US, caused the building to be evacuated and the emergency services called. When McArdle, his bride and both families arrived at the building in the centre of Liverpool, the area swarmed with police.
Later, after the building was checked and staff tried to help with the "delayed" ceremony, it was discovered that no booking for the wedding had been made. McArdle's would-be in-laws were already suspicious, the court heard, and Williams's sister was overheard telling a flustered McArdle: "You probably done the bomb scare yourself."
Police quickly traced the call and he was arrested the same day. He admitted to his "embarrassment and shame" that he had panicked over bungling the forms and staged the bomb scare.
Williams has stood by the defendant, the court heard, and they are still together.
McArdle, of Kirby, Merseyside, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to a single charge of communicating false information with intent on 26 April 2013.
Derek Jones, prosecuting, said: "He realised the day before the wedding was not going to take place and because he did not want to let his fiancee down or [he was too] embarrassed to tell his family, he panicked in the morning and rang St George's Hall.
"He was hoping all weddings would be postponed and it would give him time to book the wedding in the future. He did say several times how embarrassed and ashamed he was and how sorry he was."
Charles Lander, defending, told the court: "If it was not so serious, the facts of this case have all the markings of a comedy."
He said McArdle had failed to go through the forms given to him to make sure the wedding was legal and would go ahead as planned. Only the night before the big day did he notice a checklist of what needed to be done.
He tried to tell Williams, but she got up at 4am on the day and put on her wedding gown. "She looked amazing. He just could not get out the words to her to tell her what he had not done in relation to the forms," said Lander.
The judge Norman Wright said the bomb hoax "must have shook sheer terror in the heart" of the receptionist and those responsible for security at St George's Hall.
"She [Williams] was getting ready, expecting you were going to be man and wife and a very solemn public event in her life and you knew that was not going to take place," Wright said.
"You did not say 'we need to talk'. You tried to weasel your way out by creating a bomb hoax so the wedding would not take place. You have to understand, bomb hoaxes are extremely serious."
As well as serving 12 months in jail, McArdle was also ordered to pay £100 court costs.
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