Hundreds of mourners have attended the funeral of Becky Godden-Edwards, the young woman whose remains were found in a shallow grave in Gloucestershire earlier this year.
Miss Godden-Edwards' body was found by detectives investigating the murder of 22-year-old Sian O'Callaghan, who disappeared from a Swindon nightclub in March.
Minicab driver Christopher Halliwell, 47, has been charged with murdering both women and is due before Bristol Crown Court next week for a plea hearing.
Mourners at the funeral had been asked to wear pink to remember Miss Godden-Edwards as it had been one of her favourite colours.
Becky's father and step-father carried her white wicker coffin into the church to the sound of Coldplay's Fix You.
Her family wore pink flowers and had tied pink and white ribbons to their cars. Large floral wreaths inside the hearse spelled out 'Becky' and 'Lulu'.
During the service at Swindon's Christ Church, a poem was read to the congregation by Miss Godden-Edwards' cousin, Laura, who described her as "so glamorous with your long blonde hair and heels".
The poem continued: "The ring you gave me, I cherish it to this very day. I always told my friends about my big cousin, but how close we were, words cannot say.
"You, me, Steven and Sam are the apple of grandma's eye. We wish you were still here with us and we didn't have to say goodbye.
"I will love you and miss you forever, until the day we are again together. Sleep tight my angel."
The order of service featured a photo of Miss Godden-Edwards aged 15 at her mother's wedding in 1997.
But she had lost touch with her family in 2003 after becoming addicted to drugs.
She is said to have told her mother she loved her too much to keep putting her "through this hell", that she was leaving home and would not come back until she was "clean".
Her mother, Karen Edwards, told a press conference in April: "Over the years I have tried to find her through the police, the hospital and other organisations that trace missing persons but to no avail.
"I was told by sources close to the family, time and time again, that they had seen Becky during the missing years, so I had a strong belief that one day she would come back home.
"I continued to buy her birthday cards, Christmas presents and cards, so that when she did come back home she knew I had been thinking of her every year since she left, hoping for one day that I would be able to give them to her."
Miss Godden-Edwards remains were recovered from farmland in Eastleach in a remote part of the Cotswolds on March 26.
After extensive DNA analysis her parents were informed, on what would have been Becky's 29th birthday, that their daughter's body had been found.


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