Bride Karen Fraser was surrounded by up to 50 friends on motorbikes when she got married - including the groom, writes STEPHEN DEAL.

The 35-year-old accountant wore a white wedding dress but husband Bob was done up in leather trousers and after meeting in the town's Market Place, the group paraded round Abingdon's one-way road system before the ceremony at Abingdon Register Office.

Bob, a 36-year-old mechanic from Tithe Farm estate in the town, said: "We're not members of a club or anything like that, it's just a lot of our friends have got a common interest in bikes. There's always been a big scene in this area We had friends come down from Derby and there may also be some lads from Holland here."

The couple met through mutual friends eight years ago. Both are originally from villages just outside Abingdon - Karen from Drayton and Bob from Sutton Courtenay.

The wedding was followed with a reception at Kingfisher Barn in Abingdon and the couple left off for a two-week honeymoon in the hurricane-hit Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, newly-weds David and Alison Hipwell also rejected the traditional wedding car for a three-wheeler motorcycle when they got married in Kidlington.

The couple, of Barn Close, tied the knot at St Mary's Church and turned heads as they made their way from the service to their reception on a gleaming motorised trike.

Three trikes, accom- panied by a group of motorbikes, had taken David, 34, and members of the wedding party to the church before the ceremony.

The eye-catching convoy later made its way down Banbury Road for the post-wedding knees-up at the Linton Lodge Hotel in Summertown.

David, who normally rides a Honda Supersport 400, said the idea of using the wacky racers on the big day came from his friends, and both he and 22-year-old Alison jumped at the chance to do something different.

He said: "People I know clubbed together and did this for us. Alison loved the idea."

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