An Ashby Celebrant - who found love the second time around through the Lost and Found columns - has become the first in the UK to offer a bespoke Harmony Glass ceremony at her weddings and funerals.

The highly personalised experience - the latest to be launched by CARIAD Personal Ceremonies – marks a new collaboration with local glass artist Kayleigh Young from Market Bosworth and can even provide memorials containing a loved one's ashes.

Guests at funerals, weddings and other ceremonies are invited to come forward and pour pre-selected coloured glass crystals into a receptacle to create a bespoke piece of art to mark the occasion.

This is later blown into a chosen design at Kayleigh's studio at Shenton Railway Station where relatives are also given the option of adding ashes into the piece to create a truly bespoke memorial following a funeral.

Ali, 61, said: "I'm always on the lookout for the chance to offer a mini ceremony within a ceremony. My big focus is also on the guests. The couple give a lot of thought and time to who they want with them on their day.

"Harmony Glass is written specially into the ceremony with music playing and the family come forward and, at the same time, pour their chosen individual coloured crystals into a glass receptacle which then gets sent to the studio to be transformed into their chosen piece of glass art. They can also order a video of it being made if they want to."

Kayleigh said the ashes memorials were also becoming a more popular choice among the bereaved.

She added: "They help people have a small piece of their loved one displayed in a beautiful way without the need to have an urn or a wooden box sat on the mantelpiece. It also enables people to scatter the remainder of the ashes."

The Harmony Glass Experience is one of several ceremonies CARIAD offers as part of weddings, funerals and baby namings, others including Ring Warming (passing rings around the family or guests to warm in their hands while thinking loving thoughts) and Tree of Life (guests write heartfelt messages onto wooden hearts or doves and hang them on a steel tree to create a special memento.)

The latest collaboration marks a proud chapter for entrepreneur Ali who continues to expand the business she established in her mid-fifties following a return to education.

"It was all a bit of a shock being a single mum at the age of 36. I realised at this point I was going to have a carve out my own career to pay for the boys so I moved back to my home town to be near my parents and decided to take an intensive A-level course and then studied a degree," she said.

"I met my second husband Paul through a lost and found newspaper column.

"It was love at first sight! We often say we don't know who was lost and who was found!'

"When we were planning for our wedding we went to visit a register office and I was really taken with it. About three months later I noticed they were advertising for staff at Leicestershire Registration Service so I applied. The interview process took place in the same room we got married in!"

After working as a registrar for 12 years, it was while helping plan her best friend's wedding, that an ambitious Alison encountered what she describes as her 'lightbulb moment.'

She said: "There were so many unique themed and personalised elements they wanted, such as a string quartet and the children to do readings.

"It was absolutely amazing and I thought to myself afterwards, why can't this be done all the time? Registration is very rigid and celebrancy is the complete opposite. You have carte blanche to do whatever you like with the couple.

"So I booked myself in on some residential training while I was still working and took the leap into self-employment as a celebrant.

And so CARIAD was born.

The Welsh word for love, CARIAD (Ceremonies And Rituals In Any Destination) was also so-named as a romantic tribute to her own love story – with Welsh husband Paul.

Visit CARIAD Personal Ceremonies at: www.harmonyglass.co.uk