Wedding planner

A wedding planner who conned brides out of more than £120,000 has been ordered to pay back just £1.

Sarah Cawthorne, 32, left more than 100 women in the lurch after taking their deposits and then failing to turn up on the day of their weddings.

Through her company, A Little Bit of Bling, she promised to provide chocolate fountains, dance floors and canopies to brides.

Instead, the mother-of-two, from Dudley, West Midlands, used their money to fund a gambling addiction and took her family to Disney Land in Florida.

The unhappy customers reported her to Dudley Trading Standards and Cawthorne was sentenced to 12 months behind bars in April after being charged with fraudulent trading.

Less than five months later, she has been released on licence and made to wear an electronic tag.

And her victims are furious after it emerged that she will pay back just £1 of the £122,434 when a court heard she had ‘no assets’ and had come to a deal with Dudley Council.

During a hearing at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday, Emma Rutherford, prosecuting, said: ‘The defendant has no assets and a nominal order for £1 is sought.’

The case, which was brought under the Proceeds of Crime Act aims to recoup assets - but Cawthorne was let off after a judge ruled there were no assets to be sold.

She was ordered to pay the sum of £1 within 28 days or face returning to jail.

Last night (Sun) brides told of their disgust that Cawthorne would never have to repay the money she had taken between July 2012 and September 2013.

Poppy Gilman, 23, a trainee midwife, told of how Cawthorne had repeatedly made up lies to avoid planning her wedding.

Mrs Gilman, from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, who was left hundreds of pounds out of pocket, said: ‘She said she had been stabbed and then another time she was in hospital with depression.

‘She had that many people calling that she told me two different stories within 24 hours.’

Mrs Gilman said that, while she had to make other last minute plans for her wedding, she saw pictures on Cawthorne’s social media of her holidaying in Florida. She also read posts about a new Range Rover which Cawthorne had purchased.

She added: ‘At first I thought it was genuine but then you could tell.

‘I was glad she got sent to jail, what annoyed me more than anything was that she went on holiday.

‘I saw pictures of her on holiday in Florida with all her family which must have cost so much.

‘She was saying she didn’t have any money but then one of the Facebook group members looked at her Twitter and we could see them all in Florida.’

Mrs Gilman said that she had contacted Trading Standards to report the wedding planner and called the UK Border Agency to warn them that Cawthorne was leaving the country – despite owing thousands to her clients.

Speaking last night, Mrs Gilman said: ‘It’s all been for nothing now. I feel like it’s been dragged out. I thought this would be sorted by the time I got married.

‘The fact that she has to pay a £1- I can’t get my head round it, it’s mental.’

Another victim, Sarah Broadley, 33, from Wordsley, West Midlands, said: ‘It’s absolutely disgusting that she is only paying back £1 and has only spent a few months in jail. I’m speechless.’

Describing the scam at her sentencing in April, Mark Jackson, prosecuting, told the court: ‘In some cases, the first brides heard about this fraud was when they received a call from their venue, as they were about to walk down the aisle, to be told the venue was bare.’

He added: ‘Investigations showed that on one day, when a number of bookings had been made in October 2012, she was spending thousands of pounds in Florida in Disney World while leaving her customers high and dry.’

The court heard that analysis of bank statements showed that Cawthorne frittered away some of her customers’ money on online betting sites. In one month, July 2013, she made 118 cash transfers to one gambling site.

Her solicitor, Mukhtar Ubhi, told the court that his client had been suffering from a gambling addiction combined with depression but that she had never set out to con her clients.