The actress, 43, says she made £305 selling clutter from her garage and plans to go back with bags of clothes, though her fiancé Lewis Devine kept buying things instead.
Coronation Street star Lucy-Jo Hudson has revealed she held a car boot sale to add to her wedding fund. The 43-year-old, who became engaged to her long-term partner Lewis Devine in April, said she raised £305 by selling items that had been taking up space in her garage. She shared the story in a long Instagram post, along with photographs of the money and the goods she sold. She said she hoped to do more sales, possibly including one at Christmas.
A very early start
Hudson said the sale took her “back to my childhood”. “Ahhh it was actually so much fun… I sold so many random things, from old shoes, to baskets, to lamps, to bags, to plant pots…. that have literally just been sat in our garage, cluttering up space, for far too long,” she wrote.
She nearly missed her slot. “I nearly didn’t make it, as I set my alarm for 4.30am and it never went off, and I woke up at 6.30am panicking that I’d missed my slot, but I flew in my car got there for 6.45am and managed to get myself set up… in the dark,” she said.
Buyers were looking in her boot before she had finished unpacking. Her neighbour, Daphne, and her children arrived at about 7.30am to help, Hudson said, with Daphne bringing coffee and biscuits. They stayed until 1pm and sold “pretty much everything”.
‘Let’s be honest it can get expensive’
“Wedding planning is exciting, but let’s be honest it can get expensive VERY quickly. So I’m all for finding little ways to save money,” she wrote. She said she still had bags of clothes to sell and would return, and might do a Christmas sale too.
Mr Devine did not entirely help. “I love a car boot sale (sadly so does @lewisdevineofficial, he kept going off and buying, while I was trying to sell it, he is not coming again!),” she wrote.
Selling unwanted possessions does not suggest that Hudson is in financial difficulty. She has not said she cannot afford the wedding. A date, venue and budget for the wedding have not been announced.
Engagement
Hudson announced her engagement in April, after eight years with Mr Devine, which she described as years of “ups and downs”. She wrote that she was “still on cloud nine” and referred to their “blended family”.
She said he had planned the proposal for months. He took her back to the Lake District, “where some of our first memories began”. They spent the day reminiscing and walking through quiet gardens with no one else around. “He was on one knee,” she wrote. “I was already crying and saying YES before he’d even finished asking me. No big audience, no big show, just us, and a quiet, perfect moment that meant everything.”
She added: “After all our ups and downs, we’ve come out stronger, and now we get forever… I love you baby and I can’t wait to marry you.”
Earlier reports say the couple met while appearing in a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Mr Devine also reportedly knew Hudson’s former husband, Alan Halsall, through a 2017 pantomime.
Acting career and a ‘new chapter’
Hudson found fame in 2002 as troubled teenager Katy Harris in Coronation Street, playing the role until 2005 in a storyline dubbed “Killer Katy”. She later appeared in Wild at Heart, Doctors, Hollyoaks and Casualty. She was married to Halsall, who still plays Tyrone Dobbs in the soap, from 2009 to 2018. They have a daughter, Sienna. She has a son, Carter, with Mr Devine.
In July, she said she receives “a lot more rejection these days” in her acting career. In a separate Instagram update she described entering “a new chapter”. “I’m 43, a mum of 2, and entering a new chapter,” she wrote. “For 25 years I’ve worked as an actress. Life and the industry have changed, and so have I.” She said she was navigating perimenopause, motherhood and business while trying to look after herself, and said she would share more about wellness.
In a longer caption, she wrote of “the silent load of motherhood” and “the self tapes that seem to lead to rejection a lot more these days”. She added: “I get seriously overwhelmed, I struggle to control or even understand my emotions… This is real life, midlife, growth, wellness and everything in between. If you’ve been feeling the same recently, just know you are not alone.”
