Alton Towers crash amputee Leah Washington has tied the knot with her partner Joe Pugh in a dazzling ceremony nine years after the pair were involved in a horror smash on the theme park’s The Smiler rollercoaster.
The couple got engaged during a romantic getaway to Italy in 2022, before Leah, 26, enjoyed a hen do with a dozen close friends and family in the Algarve, Portugal last year.
But the couple’s wedding was far from always on the cards: in the aftermath of the Alton Towers crash, which saw Leah lose a leg and Joe smash both kneecaps and lose the ability to move one of his fingers, the couple drifted apart.
Then aged just 17 and 18, the life-changing injuries they sustained on their first proper date occurred when the carriage they were in smashed into a second stationary car at around 50mph.
But despite the horrific scale of the couple’s injuries, they overcame their struggles and have now got married in a beautiful ceremony surrounded by friends and family.
Joe Pugh (left) and Leah Washington (right) tied the knot in a dazzling ceremony this week, nine years after the horror Alton Towers smash
Leah, 26, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, lost a leg in the smash on The Smiler ride at Alton Towers
The happy couple shared a sweet kiss after tying the knot in an intimate ceremony with friends and family
Leah stunned in a dazzling white dress bedecked in jewels and carried a voluminous bouquet of white roses.
Her now-husband Joe opted for a simple black tuxedo, with a single matching white flower adorning his buttonhole.
Images from the intimate ceremony showed the couple celebrating with family friends as they shared a kiss outside the wedding venue.
Leah, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, previously shared how she and her friends were caught up in last summer’s air traffic control chaos on the return from her hen party.
She had shared several clips of her hen party singing, dancing and downing shots at a beach club in the Algarve in August.
Her fiance Joe even ordered 15 pink shots for the group from the club, later joking he was setting up expectations for his stag party, which was yet to come.
The couple got engaged during a romantic holiday away to Italy in 2022.
Images from the intimate ceremony showed the couple celebrating with family friends as they shared a kiss outside the wedding venue
Leah Washington and Joe Pugh shared news of their engagement to Instagram while abroad in 2022
Leah took to Instagram to share adorable snaps of the couple during the trip, as well as the substantial diamond rock which sat on her finger.
Speaking previously about how their relationship suffered in the aftermath of the tragic incident, Leah told Ok!: ‘If you’d told either of us during the weeks that followed our horrific accident at Alton Towers that we’d be planning our wedding now, I don’t think we’d have believed it.’
Leah has been outspoken about her recovery since the crash on social media, sharing clips of her participating in various sports, partying and even modelling.
In a post last year, she wrote: ‘8 years since my life flipped, how time has flown!
‘A brief little journey from then until now, a 17 year old girl thinking what was going to happen next, under confident after surgery & struggling to think positive…
‘Fast forward 8 years and I feel the best I have in a long time, planning my dream wedding, feeling continued improvements in my fitness & us of my prosthetic along side the support from my friends, family & followers.’
An investigation into the 2015 accident concluded that the crash was due to human error; an engineer had wrongly restarted the ride while a stationary carriage was on the track in front of it.
The couple beamed as Leah shared their exciting news to her 25,000-strong Instagram following
Leah shared a photo of her sparkling diamond ring alongside perfectly manicured nails during the couple’s trip to Venice
Alton Towers crash amputee Leah Washington pictured shortly after the incident, in hospital
Alton Towers owner Merlin Attractions were fined £5million for health and safety breaches which were blasted by Judge Michael Chambers QC as a ‘catastrophic failure’.
At least 16 were injured and five people were seriously hurt.
They were fined an initial £5million, and interim payments have covered Leah and Joe’s medical and physio bills to date – but the pair have also submitted a ‘substantial’ compensation claim.
Leah’s £60,000 prosthetic leg – which contains a microprocessor knee – will need replacing every few years, which will amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds over her lifetime.
She still suffers from crippling pain and fatigue after standing for lengthy periods of time.
A second woman, Vicky Balch, from Lancashire, was also forced to undergo a leg amputation after the crash.
What happened during the Alton Towers Smiler crash?
On June 2, 2015, visitors were removed from the Alton Towers Smiler ride after a warning light indicated a fault.
Staff sent a test train around the track, but it didn’t make it around. Due to a breakdown in communication, staff did not realise this carrigage was still sitting on the track.
Passengers were let back on but as the first carriage made its way around, the computer system stopped it because it showed something was blocking the track.
Engineers were still not aware that there was a fifth carriage sitting on the track and overrode a fault which had been detected by the computer system, sending the ride crashing into an empty carriage with the force of a ’90mph car crash’.
At least 16 were injured and five people were seriously hurt.
Leah Washington from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and Vicky Balch from Leyland, Lancashire, were both forced to undergo leg amputations as a result of the horror crash.
The Smiler at Alton Park, where 16 people were injured in a 2015 collision (file picture). An investigation found that a computer block stopping the ride because of a stationary car on the track had been over-ridden by staff, causing the crash
Joe Pugh, also from Barnsley, and Daniel Thorpe, 28, from Buxton, Derbyshire, also suffered serious leg injuries, along with 49-year-old Chandaben Chauhan.
The trapped ride-goers had to wait more than four hours to be freed from the crumpled carriage while rescue workers battled to reach them as they sat 25ft up in the air at an angle of about 45 degrees, pinned in by the mangled metal.