Kate Wignall, 25, died after a battle with stage four melanoma skin cancer. Her fiancé, Ryan Dixon, also 25, had proposed just one day before she first started developing symptoms.

“Although these are the vows we did not get to speak, they will be ours forever, to cherish and keep,” Dixon said at the funeral, as reported by Metro. “I feel so privileged to have felt true love. To have loved you and been loved by you, to have lived our lives so fully, together. You have already given me the world, Kate. I will always love you and my heart will always belong to you.”

The pair reportedly met in Cornwall, U.K., when they were just 15 years old.

Dixon has now vowed to honour his fiancée’s life by ticking off a bucket list of experiences she hoped to have before her death.

He has also helped raise £5,300 for Cancer Research by hiking up each of the highest peaks in England, Scotland and Wales in her memory.

“If I can take Kate’s legacy with me everywhere I go, that’s what I’m going to do,” Dixon said. “She was the most beautiful soul in the world inside and out, so I hope I can do her just a little bit of justice, but it will never compare to how she really was. The way I see it is she’s always with me, so it’s never truly goodbye.”

Dixon, a lab technician, proposed in May last year and the couple planned to wed in Rhodes, Greece, in 2022.

“I still can’t believe that my best friend asked me to marry him,” Wignall wrote in an Instagram post at the time, alongside a caption of the pair as she showed off her ring.

The day after the proposal, Wignall began to feel agonizing pain in her chest. After seeing the doctor and being sent for tests, she was ultimately diagnosed with skin cancer just six weeks later.

Further investigations revealed the 25-year-old had stage four melanoma—an aggressive skin cancer—which had spread to her brain, spine, spleen, kidney and lungs.

“The last 2 months have been the best and worst of my life. To get engaged, buy our first and forever home and then to be diagnosed with cancer and spend 3 weeks alone in hospital,” Wignall wrote in August of last year.

“Ryan has been the biggest support and I couldn’t face this journey without him. I feel so lucky to have someone who just knows exactly what to say and do. We have had some of the most incredible times and I just can’t wait to keep living life together.”

The occupational therapist described the moment she told her fiancé about the diagnosis as “heartbreaking.”

“Early detection of cancer saves lives,” she wrote in an Instagram post at the time. “Being young does not mean you are invincible to cancer. The day I got diagnosed with incurable cancer, my life fell into a million pieces.”

After the couple realized the cancer was advancing and Wignall’s health deteriorated, they brought the date of their wedding forward and the venue closer.

“We didn’t quite make it,” Dixon said, referring to April 14, 2021, the date when Wignall passed away. “Only three and a half weeks after being at home she passed away with me, her mum, her dad and her sister by her side at home. Kate’s last memories were planning our wedding which is a slight comfort as she was so excited about it. She was very strong-willed, and she didn’t want to get married at home. She wanted the venue and the dress and, typical Kate, she wouldn’t have it any other way. But neither would I.”