(Relaxnews) - After a Canadian man gave an around-the-world ticket to his ex’s doppelganger following a break-up, another jilted lover, this time in England, has had to resort to a similar scheme, selling an all-inclusive tropical vacation for about $15.
After being dumped over Christmas, just weeks before he was to be married, ‘Jilted John’ as he calls himself, found himself stuck with an extra ticket for a dream honeymoon in the Caribbean.
When the Leicestershire man was told he would only be able to get half his money back on the two-week holiday at the Blue Bay Villas Hotel in the Dominican Republic, John Whitbread decided to take a gamble and sell the spare ticket to a stranger on eBay.
His criteria for his new traveling companion: easy-going, down to earth, British citizen, and athletic.
When the top eBay bidders reneged, however, Whitbread took a different approach, raffling off tickets for £10 (US$15) on his site.
The winner -- ticket No. 53 -- was Kelly Wood, whom he met for the first time at the Manchester airport just two hours before boarding his plane to the Dominican on Monday morning.
Cameras from ITV's local program "Good Morning Britain" captured the moment the two shared their first hug.
The raffle succeeded in raising about £2,000 (about US$3075), half of which will go towards Balls for Cancer, he told The Daily Mail.
Last year, the story of a Toronto man’s search for his ex-girlfriend’s doppelganger also went viral, when Jordan Axani put up a chance of a lifetime for any Canadian woman named Elizabeth Gallagher.
When Axani found himself with an extra around-the-world plane ticket following a break-up, he offered up the ticket -- which stopped in Milan, Prague, Paris and Bangkok -- on user-generated site Reddit. The story went viral, and succeeded in finding the newly single man a stand-in.
The trip, however, failed to spark any romantic connections.
Whitbread and Wood left for Puerto Plata February 16 and return March 3.
