NORTH-EAST factory worker Malcolm Bunting went to Russia for love - and found a bride within hours of arriving.

The 56-year-old returned to St Petersburg to marry music teacher Iolante, who has two children Alexander, 11 and Katie, seven, earlier this month.

Now he is waiting for completion of official paperwork that will enable his new family to join him at his home - the house in a cemetery he feared would deter prospective partners.

"I'm hoping it won't be more than a few weeks before they arrive," he said. "They're all looking forward to it."

After failing to find a partner closer to home, Mr Bunting went to Russia in search of a wife as part of a Tyne Tees Television documentary series Brides Abroad. He travelled as part of a romance trip organised by a US company.

Of the four men chosen from 85 applicants to take part in the programme, he is the only one to end as a married man. One other romance-seeker went to Russia with him, while two others looked for love in Thailand.

Mr Bunting's wedding at a former palace in St Petersburg, now used as a register office, was shown in the final part of Brides Abroad on Tyne Tees last night.

"We could only have dreamed of having a wedding at the end of the series. It was thrilling that it actually happened," said producer Leon Gingell.

Mr Bunting, who works as a packer on a production line at a factory in Blaydon, Tyneside, is twice divorced.

He met and proposed to divorcee Iolante within days of arriving in St Petersburg in December. She was one of the first women he saw on his first mass blind date at a nightclub.