Newlyweds forced to give up sex as bride diagnosed with cervical cancer just five days after honeymoon ::cervical cancer

A pair of newlyweds have been forced to give up sex after the bride was diagnosed with cervical cancer just days after their honeymoon.

Kayleigh and Rory Spillman married last August at a countryside manor in Hertfordshire, before jetting off to luxurious Bora Bora in French Polynesia.

But only five days after the pair returned to the UK to start life as a married couple, Kayleigh, 29, was given the devastating news she had cancer.

Now, the couple have endured three months of enforced celibacy, while she recovers from a radical trachelectomy to remove her cervix.

"What should have been the best months of our lives have been some of the worst,” said Kayleigh, reflecting on the traumas she and her husband have been through over the past six months.

“We wanted to enjoy life as a married couple, just normal things, but that’s been put on hold.”

The couple, from Hertfordshire, have endured three months of enforced celibacy (Photo: PA Real Life)

The couple's story comes as research by charity Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust has found a quarter of young women are too embarrassed to attend smear tests and 50 per cent of those surveyed reported delaying or not attending appointments.

Kayleigh, a special needs teacher, visited her GP for a routine smear in July last year after getting the all clear at her first test three years earlier.

With her wedding just two weeks away, she was so busy putting the finishing touches to her big day she thought little of the polyps the nurse found during the smear.

“They said it was nothing worry about and I got a letter saying I’d need a colposcopy to take a look at my cervix a few weeks later”, said Kayleigh, who met Rory, 28, at the University of Kent 10 years ago.

“The procedure was just four days before the wedding, so I thought of it like a hair appointment I needed to get done, rather than as anything serious.”

At the colposcopy at Hertford County Hospital on August 2, Kayleigh says she was giddy with excitement about her big day on August 6 and wasn’t worried.

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And when she and Rory said ‘I do’ at Shendish Manor, in front of friends and family, the thought of cancer couldn't have been further from her mind.

Wearing a cream lace dress, with her hair perfectly curled, Kayleigh felt every inch the princess, marrying her handsome prince, solicitor Rory.

“The wedding was the most amazing day," she said.

"We got engaged in 2012, so we had waited such a long time for the day to arrive and it couldn't have been any more perfect.