A bride on her hen do suffered a horrifying ordeal in a nightclub just weeks before her wedding.

Ffion Price-Dunne, 28, sustained severe head lacerations, facial wounds, a brain bleed, and a fractured skull when a wall collapsed on top of her after an electric battery exploded in the venue in Paris.

Miraculously, Ffion, from Brynmawr, south Wales, summoned the strength to marry her longtime love Christian, all while grappling with the catastrophic after-effects of the horror.

Ffion told WalesOnline she recalls “waking up on the floor and being in a puddle of blood.” The young woman was whisked off to Paris for her hen do in July, organised by 22 of her family members and friends, and visited a popular club, situated near the historic Place de la Bastille, on the second night, Saturday July 6.

“My younger sister had planned a full weekend. I only found out on the day what we were doing and they had made an itinerary for us. The first day and night we had an amazing time. We had an absolutely beautiful chateau about a 20-minute drive outside of Paris and visited the Moulin Rouge. It was perfect,” Ffion recalled.

“We were on the first floor and the dance floor was on the ground floor. My mam, my mother-in-law and some of her friends left because they didn’t want to stay for the nightclub bit and just went over the road to a little cafe and sat outside.

“The girls say that we left the table and went down stairs no more than five minutes – perhaps less than five minutes, and from there, it’s a bit of a blur. I just remember waking up on the floor and being in a puddle of blood.”

Ffion discovered that the cause of the chaos was an e-scooter battery which exploded while charging on the fourth floor of a Parisian building. The blast brought down part of a wall, with repercussions felt even on the ground floor, during a packed party where around 140 revellers were enjoying their evening.

Three individuals, including Ffion herself, were injured in the frightening ordeal. Ffion’s mother, Sarah Price, who was at a nearby cafe when the explosion occurred, shared her harrowing experience: “There were about nine or 10 people around my age who decided to go to the cafe,” Sarah commented. “We had been there for about five minutes when literally everyone’s phone started ringing and that’s when we knew that something was up.”

Sarah relayed her intense fear upon receiving a chilling call, saying: “We answered the phone and one of Ffion’s friends told me: ‘Ffion’s been knocked out’, so I ran over. When we went in, it was like something out of Casualty, the room was all sort of reddish. She was all dressed beautifully in white, on the floor with like a two metre circumference around her head, which was just blood.

“It was utterly distressing; they wouldn’t let us near her or anything. We didn’t realise initially there was a fire they were trying to contain, and everyone was being evacuated. Luckily, an off-duty police officer stayed by our side, while one of the women from the hen party remained with Ffion on the ground until the ambulance arrived,” she added with evident emotion.

Sarah revealed that Ffion was quickly rushed to the hospital where she was treated in intensive care. She had suffered two large cuts to her head, several facial injuries, a brain bleed, and fractures to her skull and ear.

Ffion spent the next two weeks in hospital, with her loved ones – including her fiance Christian, flying out to be with her. “It was the worst time of our lives,” Sarah admitted.

Ffion, however, has little recollection of her hospital stay. She shared: “I remember arriving in AandE, I remember hearing about a bleed on the brain, but I wasn’t really thinking about it. It felt like I was coming in and out of a deep sleep. I remember them stapling my head and stitching my face with local anaesthetic. I remember them telling me I was going for surgery, but I can’t remember coming round from that surgery. The next thing I remember was when my dad arrived. Everything else seems like a bit of a blur.”

Ffion was released from the hospital on Monday, July 15. Unable to fly due to her condition, she returned to the UK via Eurostar on Friday, July 19 – exactly two weeks after she had arrived in Paris for her hen party.

Upon returning to Wales, Ffion slowly began to recover, and the subject of her wedding with Christian was broached. Reflecting on the moment, she shared: “Chris asked me: ‘what are we going to do with the wedding? ‘,” and continued, “And I thought, we hadn’t planned it all and gone through all that stress, for it not to happen.”

She then added, “I felt like I was lucky to be alive, and even though our wedding was going to be different, I didn’t want to go all through that to postpone something that was meant to be exciting.”

Undeterred by the circumstances, they were wed during the bank holiday weekend in August. Describing the event, a cheerful Ffion stated, “It was lovely,” and further commented that “It was tiring, but very special and very emotional – I don’t think there was a dry eye at the wedding. We had both of our families and close friends all there.”

Two months later, Ffion continues to recover from the harrowing experience which has transformed her outlook on life. To support her recovery process, a GoFundMe campaign was initiated and has successfully garnered extraordinary support, topping its initial goal of £2,500.

“I’m still recovering, I still have spells of dizziness and I haven’t gone back to work yet,” she shared candidly. “Physically, I’m doing quite well, my scars have all healed. When I got back, I realised I couldn’t walk very well, I had spent so much time in bed, I had lost a lot of weight and had spells of dizziness. It was hard, but I kept going for little walks and tried to keep to a normal life as much as I could. So physically, I’ve not done too bad.”

She continued: “This has affected my life. It has made me realise that anything can happen at any point in your life. But I have my family here, Chris is here and I have many supportive friends.”

“A week before the wedding, me and the girls from the hen do came together to meet up. We’ve been through so much, and experienced things we never thought we would. This was our way of bringing us together and it helped us. Even though Paris did have an effect on our wedding day, we didn’t want it to overshadow it. And it was a lovely day.”

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