Many a bride has thrown her bouquet to her bridesmaids and other unmarried women at the wedding in the hope that her good fortune will rub off on them.

The custom ended in disaster at a wedding in Tuscany, however, when the bouquet was thrown to the guests from a hired microlight aircraft and the flowers were sucked into the engine, causing it to explode.

The microlight crashed into a youth hostel near the restaurant where the reception was held in the 7,000-hectare Montioni Park in Suvereto, near Livorno.

The 50 young people who had been in the hostel escaped unscathed, as did the 61-year-old pilot, Luciano Nannelli, from Livorno.

The bouquet was thrown from the aircraft by a guest who was named as Isidoro Pensieri, 44, from Livorno. He suffered multiple fractures to both legs and a head injury.

“They wanted to celebrate the wedding in an original fashion but the traditional throwing of the bouquet turned into a drama instead,” Il Tirreno, the local newspaper, reported him as saying. “It certainly left the wedding guests open mouthed — but not for the reason expected.”

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