WHEN Stan Young found love through The Northern Echo's contact column, Two's Company, there was one person he never expected to be at his wedding to fiancee Gail Burns.

But their blossoming relationship led to Stan tracing the father he thought was dead - and four half-brothers he never knew existed.

The discovery saw Stan, 39, and Gail, 37, cancel their plans to flit to Gretna Green for a quiet wedding and invite his new-found family to a ceremony at Bishop Auckland Register Office, County Durham, on Saturday instead.

Stan's dad Alec and his wife Lydia were on hand to see the son he had waited years to meet marry the woman who brought them together. Brothers Alec, Alan, David and Tom were unable to make the ceremony because of various commitments, but managed to join the celebrations later in the day.

"It was absolutely amazing to find I'd got four brothers and we are all similar in what we do and all look similar," said Stan, from Willington. "It's nice just to be a family."

After reading her advertisement in Two's Company, Stan phoned "single non-smoking female with long blonde hair" Gail in March 1999 because he liked blondes.

A year later she had badgered him into searching for his father, who he had never met.

The trail led him to Newcastle where he found his new family. Although his half-brothers never knew about Stan, Alec and Lydia had been hoping for years he would get in touch.

And, like Stan, his father and brother Alan are qualified mechanics and all of them are interested in motorbikes.

Following the wedding, Stan and Gail plan to head off on an adventurous honeymoon "where the wind takes us" with a trailer tent.