LIKE most brides to be, Charmaine Watson spent hours agonising over her wedding guest list — and desperately tried to keep costs down.

But unlike other women planning their big day, her £25,000 budget seemed like a drop in the ocean after scooping £2.3m on the National Lottery in 2005.

Mrs Watson, née Collins, from Eynsham, said that even four years after becoming an overnight millionaire, she still hunted for bargains at the shops, purchased her wedding dress in a sale and “saved up” for treats rather than splashing out on frivolous items.

In fact, she claimed the Lotto win hadn’t changed her or her family at all.

The 29-year-old mother-of-three said: “I don’t think I have changed as a person at all.

“It is nice that I can give my children what they need without worrying about it, and it made it easier when I was planning my wedding that I didn’t have to worry so much about finding the money.

“But I know I would have had my dream wedding anyway because my family would have given me that day somehow.”

She added: “You still try and keep the costs down because spending all that money on one day seemed ridiculous.”

Mrs Watson and husband Robby, who runs a carpentry business, were married in June last year at St Leonard’s Church, Eynsham, followed by a reception at the Four Pillars Hotel in Witney — the wedding she had dreamed of since she was a little girl.

And instead of an exotic honeymoon in a luxury location abroad, Mr and Mrs Watson spent a week in the Lake District, followed by a week with children Ryan, five, Georgia, two-and-a-half, and Daniel, four months, in Weymouth.

Mrs Watson — who won with the numbers 3, 10, 13, 22, 31 and 33 — said: “I want that money to last my lifetime and my kids’ lifetime, so spending out on silly things is just pointless.

“I think it’s also important for the children to have a normal childhod and a normal upbringing and to understand the value of money.”

The full-time mother has made a couple of big purchases — her four-bedroom detached family home at £400,000, and a four-bedroom detached house for her mother.

But she dismissed rumours that she had her eye on a village pub, The Star, which was recently put up for sale.

She said: “It doesn’t appeal to me.”

Her children will be educated at Eynsham Primary School and the Bartholomew School, the village secondary school — as she was — and the youngsters have to earn their treats, for example by tidying their rooms.

Mrs Watson said in the future she hoped to complete a college course in beauty or child psychology and to work for a living.

She said: “If you win the Lottery, you cannot let it go to your head, you have got to be the person you have always been.

“In some ways it still hasn’t really sunk in — we get up in the morning, dress the kids, have breakfast, and just have a normal family life.”

fbardsley@oxfordmail.co.uk