Dancers' romance leads to wedding

They met on the dance floor and now Black Country pensioners Sylvia Wakeman and Bill Colley will be waltzing down the aisle.

The couple got engaged after Bill, 79, went down on one knee and asked Sylvia,77, to marry him before going home to water his plants.

Sylvia admits she did not think she would find love again at her age but says Bill swept her off her feet when the met at Age Concern Stourbridge in St John's Road. They have set a date for June next year and will wed at Wollaston Free Church in Somerset Drive.

Bill, from Withymoor Village, visits the Age Concern centre on a Tuesday and Thursday to play whist while Sylvia, from Wollaston, attends the Monday and Wednesday dance sessions.

But it was the following year after Bill joined before they met at a harvest supper in October 2008.

Sylvia was dancing and ex-Tarmac computer manager Bill joined in.

He visited the centre the following week on a day he knew Sylvia, a retired branch manager for Cheltenham and Gloucester Building Society, would be there and asked her to teach him how to sequence dance.

Sylvia, who has danced since she was a teenager, said: "I thought how lovely I am getting a dance partner. I had no idea he had taken a shine to me."

Widower Bill popped the question on the spur of the moment and said: "I had been to Sylvia's for tea and I was just going home to water my plants. I was in the porch and got down on one knee and asked Sylvia to marry me."

Sylvia, who has been married twice before, said: "The proposal came out of the blue. I was so dumbstruck I said yes."

While Sylvia thinks fate brought them together, they may never have met had it not been for the centre's kitchen manager Ann Dukes.

She arranged for Bill to be at the harvest supper knowing Sylvia would be there. She said: "You only have to look at them to know they are made for each other."