Meltdown Monday: We lost our jobs...now we could lose our dream wedding

By Lauren Mills, Mail on Sunday Senior Financial Correspondent
Updated: 16:22 GMT, 22 September 2008

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It was the photograph that captured the human heartache behind the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Now it has emerged that the woman pictured yesterday on MailOnline tenderly embracing her fiancé outside the bank's London offices had more reason than most for being heartbroken at the bankruptcy.

Not only is she one of the company's 4,500 UK based staff suddenly facing the sack, but her wedding plans are also now in turmoil.

Heartbroken: Lehman Brothers employee Blue and her fiancé Jack comfort each other yesterday

The American, known only as Blue, worked in the human resources department of the bank's headquarters at Canary Wharf.

She and her fiancé, Jack, who works at Barclays, were due to put the down payment down this weekend for her wedding after receiving her monthly pay cheque on Friday.

But the bank's administrator, PricewaterhouseCoopers has said it does not have the £42million needed to meet the bank's wage bill - and does not know if it will be able to raise the funds.

Yesterday, as Blue returned to the bank to meet up with friends, she told of the uncertainty now surrounding her planned nuptials.

She said: 'I am very upset. I am getting married next year and I was due to put down a deposit at the weekend because we were getting paid on Friday.

'Now this has happened and it seems like we won't get our salary.

'I don't know what I'm going to do. We may have to postpone the wedding or cut it down.

'It's a very difficult time.'

Bad news: Blue is comforted by her fiancé

Yesterday as more of the staff's workers cleared their desks and carried their possessions out in cardboard boxes some vented their anger at the company's Chief Executive, Dick Fuld.

A researcher at the firm, who gave her name as Liz, 51, said: 'Dick Fuld, where are you? Why have you not contacted your staff?

'Our own managers know nothing, they are very embarrassed, do you think we are going to lynch you?'

Others, like 27-year-old Stephen Day, who works in Lehman Brothers IT department, were still stunned by the sudden announcement of the bankruptcy in the early hours of Monday morning.

He said: 'It's pretty dire in there and at the moment we are just waiting to see what will happen.

'I've been working with my team for six years and this all came as a very big shock.

'We realise that there had been problems in the company but we were told we would be bought out by someone, and now we are expecting to lose our jobs by the end of month.

A Lehman Brothers employee writes a message on a portrait of the company's chief executive Dick Fuld's in New York on Monday

'A lot of people haven't bothered to come in today and it's very quiet in there, people aren't saying too much, they are just coming in to grab their things then go home. We are all pretty numb.

'We haven't had much information at all but it is good to be here where the information will be and in the meantime I am working on my CV.

'I am one of the lucky ones, I haven't got a mortgage or a family but there are a lot of ambitious people who have just started out and it's difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that they don't have any jobs.'

Alex Haughton, a graduate recruiter at Lehman Brothers, said he was one of the many 'normal employees' without a high salary who would struggle to cope with the company's collapse.

He said: 'I'm still quite numb and in shock, this is unprecedented. I have been told I am leaving on Friday. I've got to look for another job now but I'm looking in a saturated market.

'There is a chance I won't be paid but I have still got to pay all of my bills.

'People think that everyone here has got to be well paid and a millionaire but that's not the case, there are a lot of average people here, they look for the next salary payment to live on and this really will affect a lot of people.'