A TEACHING assistant with a penchant for crisps has saved a packet on her wedding dress after a colleague made one from wrappers of her favourite snack.

Jane Gettings, who is tying the knot this weekend, can get through three of four bags a day and is known for her fondness for the savoury treat.

The 47-year-old learning support assistant was today (Thursday, March 20) given a surprise wedding party at Harelaw School at Harelaw, near Stanley, County Durham, where she has worked for eight years.

Staff had asked Consett-based snack maker Phileas Fogg for empty packets and art teacher Louise Oliver fashioned 75 of them into a wedding dress, complete with train.

Ms Gettings said: “It is amazing. I cried when I first saw it. I have been wearing it. It is quite comfortable but a bit hot.

“I am not wearing it for the actual ceremony, but I will wear it for a bit on the night time.”

Ms Gettings, whose favourite flavours are cheese and onion and pickled onion, is marrying her fiancé, Paul Turnbull, on Saturday, 25 years to the day since they met at Klub Karisma in Consett.

Mr Gettings was collected from her home at lunchtime today and chauffeur driven to school where she was greeted by pupils who formed a guard of honour after she put on her specially designed dress.

As The Wedding March played, she was led to her waiting groom-to-be for a mock ceremony, before pupils enjoyed a disco and buffet.

Ms Gettings said: “It was to show the bairns I am getting married and what that means and show them my crisp dress.

“It was a complete surprise. I was quite overwhelmed by all of their kindness. It has made me cry.”

The couple, who have two children, Jamie, 25, and Abbie, 13, and live in Moorside, near Consett, will get hitched at Aykley Heads register office in Durham.

Mr Turnbull, a workshop controller for a caravan and motorhome company, said: “She would just eat crisps all day if she could. I am used to it by now.

“She has cut down a bit recently though for the wedding.”

TEN FACTS ABOUT CRISPS

1. Crisps are said to have been invented around 1853 by Charles Crum, a chef at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York, after a customer kept asking for thinner potatoes.

2. The earliest known use of the word “crisp” for such thin, fried potatoes was in 1929.

3. The world's largest collection of empty crisp packets went on display at a museum in Vreden, Germany, in 2008, with around 2,000 packets.

4. The average Potato Chip or Crisp is between 0.04 (0.1cm) and 0.09 (0.2cm) of an inch thick, but ridged crisps are four times thicker.

5. It takes about five to six potatoes or 600g to make a 150g bag of chips.

6. Crisps are found in over 70 per cent of kids' lunch boxes in the UK.

7. Walkers UK produces 10m packs of crisps every day, using more than 350,000 tonnes of potatoes a year, for the UK market.

8. People in the UK eat a tonne of crisps every three minutes, enough to fill a telephone box every 43 seconds and an Olympic sized swimming pool every 14 hours.

9. The most popular UK Potato crisp varieties are ready salted, cheese and onion and salt and vinegar whereas in the USA the most popular ‘potato chip’ flavours are regular, barbecue and sour cream and onion.

10. The man that invented the Pringles can, Fredric J Baur, died in May 2008 and his cremated ashes were buried in a Pringles can.