Funeral held for honeymoon couple

Two months ago, the families of Ben and Catherine Mullany gathered to see the happy couple marry at their local parish church in South Wales, before waving them off on their tropical honeymoon.

But yesterday, the Duchess of York was among the 900 mourners who joined the grieving families at Llandaff Cathedral, in Cardiff, to pay their last respects to the couple, who were shot dead on the last day of their honeymoon on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The hour-long memorial service, in which tributes were paid to the newlyweds by their families and friends, was led by the same man who had married them, Reverend Martyn Perry.

The pair were buried last month in a private service at St John the Evangelist Church in Cilybebyll, where they had tied the knot in July.

The Duchess of York, who met Catherine Mullany's brother Richard by chance on a flight to Antigua shortly after the couple's deaths, read a WB Yeats poem and paid tribute to the victims' families. She said: "They are so strong, with such a great hole in their hearts. But they are so united as a family, and I think they just deal with it day by day, going forward."

Catherine Mullany, 31, a doctor, died instantly in what is believed to have been a botched robbery attempt on the couple's holiday cabin. Her husband Ben, also 31, was a trainee physiotherapist. He was flown home while still in a coma but later died in hospital in Swansea.

Two men are currently in custody in Antigua charged with the couple's murder.