As far as Angela Osbourne was aware, she was to be the guest model at yesterday’s Wedding Fantasies Expo 2K6 staged by Jus 4U Bridal and Tuxedo Limousine Service at Portmore HEART Academy in St Catherine.

With her hair and make-up done, the 24-year-old resident of Mile End, Ocho Rios watched from the audience as her friends Bridgette Burke and Corey McKoy strutted their stuff on the runway in various wedding outfits.

Osbourne waited patiently for the word to don her gown and emerge from the limousine parked outside for what she believed would be the extravagant climax of the fashion show. To the strains of Chapel Of Love, Osbourne walked from the limo to the door of the Academy’s auditorium, only to see her partner of 12 years, Kevin Clarke, handsomely dressed in a white three-piece tuxedo, with pink vest, smiling and waiting for her on stage.

She burst into tears of joy on learning that she was actually attending her wedding.

“I was surprised… astonished,” said Osbourne, a preparatory school teacher, after the brief ceremony and reception. “I didn’t know anything about it.”

But as she explained, her husband has a penchant for surprising her.

“The engagement was the same thing,” she told the Observer, explaining how last New Year’s Eve at the Terra Nova Hotel he slipped her engagement ring into a glass of champange, and at the magical midnight hour she found herself engaged.

The wedding, however, was definitely the biggest surprise she had received, as she had been busy planning for a December wedding.

According to Clarke, it was difficult to keep the plan a secret and he had to enlist the help of his friends and the staff at Five Star Watersports, where he works, to keep Angela from finding out. And even though the event was planned by Vibes Productions in just two weeks, the couple declared themselves happy with the outcome.

“We’ve been together for so long… the whole community thinks we’re married,” said Osbourne. “It’s nice to be married finally.”