Moment bride-to-be has a tearful meltdown the night before her wedding after luxury hotel ‘lost’ her dress and the food gave her a ‘dodgy stomach’

A woman battling cancer and a 13cm tumour has claimed her wedding day was ruined by a hotel after they lost her dress, leaving her with an ‘uneasy stomach’.

Elizabeth Slade, 43, travelled to the four-star DoubleTree Hilton hotel near Thame, Oxfordshire, ahead of the special occasion, which took place last Saturday.

But she spent the first hours of the morning of the wedding in an emotional outburst, filming a clip of herself explaining the “nightmare experience” she had had.

The attendant said she had dropped off the white dress last Tuesday and arrived at the hotel on Friday. When she arrived, she claimed that none of the staff helped her as she was struggling with her bags.

The 43-year-old claims staff then gave her a Twix and a KitKat bar as an apology for the way she had been treated.

Elizabeth and David Slade are pictured cutting the cake on their wedding day

At 8pm the night before her wedding, Elizabeth dined at the restaurant with her friend. She had the calamari, her friend opted for fish and chips and the couple shared a bottle of bubbly.

However, the bride-to-be reportedly suffered food poisoning from her meal and described the squid as ‘chewy’, while her friend was unaffected by her dish.

About two hours later she went to the front desk to pick up her wedding dress, but the woman behind the counter said she had no idea what she was talking about.

Elizabeth told FEMAIL: ‘She looked at me and said “What dress?” So I panicked a bit and said “The bride’s dress, the dress I’m wearing tomorrow for my wedding”. And then she said “I don’t know anything about that?”.

‘By this time I was starting to feel sick. I ran to the toilet and had to go to reception for more toilet rolls as there was only one in the room.’

Elizabeth then went outside, as she was nearly in tears when they couldn’t find her dress.

‘Then they finally found my dress, I think around 11:30 at night. And you know, it was just a huge panic that lasted for a while.

‘Then I finally went to bed at about one in the morning and woke up at two and didn’t feel well at all.

Elizabeth made a video clip in which she cries and talks about her experience at the hotel, where they reportedly lost her wedding dress and ‘gave her a funny feeling in her stomach’

Elizabeth claimed that the Hilton hotel “lost” her dress, but that she found it late the night before her wedding.

‘I tried to call the front desk at 3am and ask, “Can I get some more toilet paper because I’m going to die here?”

‘No answer. I really struggled to get to reception which is about a 15 minute walk. There were two men behind reception and I went downstairs crying, asked for toilet roll and said I had had a terrible experience.

“I said, ‘I have food poisoning right now,’ and they just looked at me, they didn’t even say, ‘sorry,’ or ‘can we help you?’”

Elizabeth said she lay on the ground crying around 3am before walking to her car to express her emotions, then filmed herself crying.

In the clip, she says that “nothing but disasters” have happened since she arrived at the hotel, where the cheapest double room costs around £124 a night, adding that she felt “so miserable and disappointed”.

Elizabeth said: ‘I’ve wanted to get married all my life and have a special day, but it was a disaster from start to finish.’

“I would never film myself crying, but I thought, ‘I need proof. I need proof of what I look like at 3 a.m. on the morning of my wedding,'” she said.

“I’m saying it’s not fair because of what David and I have been through over the years.”

In August 2021, Elizabeth was diagnosed with Signet Ring Cell Carcinoma, a rare form of cancer that originates in the glandular cells.

She said: ‘I was initially told I only had a year to live because they thought the cancer had spread everywhere.

But actually, when I finally [all my] operations and [treatments]they removed this huge 13cm tumor from the top of my rectum.

‘I was incredibly lucky because the scan showed a large lump in my liver, so they automatically thought it had spread, but in reality it had [was a] a group of blood vessels in my liver and it wasn’t cancer.

Elizabeth said she waited ‘all her life’ to get married and battled a 13cm tumour

The blue and white Volkswagen camper van cake that the bride and groom had on their wedding day

“As far as I know, and as far as medical professionals know, I do not have cancer, and that is just remarkable.”

Elizabeth said cancer campaigner Dame Deborah James, also known as Bowel Babe, helped her through the tough times.

“If I hadn’t watched her videos, I don’t think I would have been able to approach it as positively. She was remarkable. And she definitely helped me through my journey,” she added.

Elizabeth said she had waited “all her life” to get married and had the last few procedures done just four weeks before her wedding.

She said her family has never had “a lot of money” and that they originally planned to have a modest wedding and celebrate the nuptials on a smaller scale.

However, her mother won some money on a scratch card and decided to use this money to give Elizabeth the fairytale wedding she had always dreamed of.

‘My parents both worked hard all their lives, David and I worked very hard too and we never had much money left.

“So we planned a much more modest wedding. I won the lottery of life and about a year ago my mother won some money on a scratch card just before Christmas.

‘She got really excited and said she would be happy to pay for my wedding, so the amount was increased a little bit.

“I was able to get a beautiful wedding dress and my mother had my front teeth done. My front teeth weren’t perfect, they were knocked out when I was 10 years old.”

Luckily, Elizabeth was able to pop some Imodium pills and felt well enough to tie the knot and marry the love of her life, David Slade, 47.

‘I finally fell asleep at 5am and slept for an hour before waking up again. I had booked a wedding breakfast but I couldn’t eat it.

“I decided to call my maid of honor and ask her to bring me some Imodium pills. I took one and it seemed to work,” said Elizabeth, who has a teenage daughter from a previous relationship.

‘The octopus made me terrified that I would have an accident in my beautiful white wedding dress. I thought I would have to walk down the aisle with my bum in my hands.’

She also held her own at the reception at Notley Tythe Barn in Long Crendon, where she took the microphone and sang three songs, including ‘It Must Be Love’ by Madness.

Looking back on the wedding that almost didn’t happen, she said: ‘I haven’t even had an apology from the Hilton. It was absolutely awful and I thought it would never happen.’

Her husband David only heard about Elizabeth’s experience on their wedding day.

Things started to change for Elizabeth when she called her maid of honor and asked her to bring some Imodium pills

Elizabeth said she had a miserable time at the hotel and felt unwell after eating a meal there

“I paid for a nightmare experience and they still haven’t offered to give me my money back,” she added.

The morning after they tied the knot, one of the guests told the bride and groom that they had stayed in a better room than they had.

‘We got a standard suite and the next day she found out that a friend of hers, obviously you know it wasn’t the friend’s fault, but they got [a better room] for us.

“It’s a very large suite with two different rooms. I think we put two and two together and decided we should have had the one.”

Elizabeth claimed that she had called the hotel prior to the stay and was told that they would be upgraded to another room due to the special occasion.

‘[My friend] said it felt like she was in the bridal suite because it was much bigger than the one she had [originally] “Booked,” said the mother of one.

“It was just the icing on the cake. I just thought at that point I wanted to get out of the hotel.”

The couple are now on honeymoon in Cyprus and say they are having a ‘lovely time’. Elizabeth added: ‘The hotel is phenomenal. It is literally 100 per cent the opposite of the Oxford experience.’

A Hilton spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘We value every stay our guests make and want to ensure every experience is enjoyable.

‘We didn’t know there was a complaint until the newspaper recently informed us about it. We don’t want anyone to feel like they haven’t had the best possible experience, so if Elizabeth does get in touch with us (which she hasn’t done yet), we’d be happy to discuss it.’