True love has no boundaries!
Although I was working in the same company as him for a summer, I first
met Darren at a barbecue. We sat together from the moment we arrived until
I left…but we didn’t notice each other at all. In fact I don’t
think we even spoke to each other that night! However, I bumped into him
two weeks later in a bar and after a bit of Dutch courage we chatted all
evening. This led to a trip to the cinema a few weeks later and, after a
few more outings over the past five years, we are making that infamous trip
down the aisle next year. Sounds pretty straightforward. Of course not!
I was starting my final year in college in Dublin when we met, but we
decided that we could do the long-distance thing. I don’t think
either of us thought that we would end up doing it for three years! Between
college & J1 trips to the US, I managed to keep at least one hundred
miles between us for that length of time. After a particularly difficult
summer of thesis writing, where Darren and I spent a grand total of 24
hours out of four weeks in each other’s company, it came to decision
time for us. Funnily enough, after all my time with itchy feet, the decision
to make my next move closer to Darren and to make it a permanent one seemed
quite natural. As natural the feeling was that I wanted to be with Darren,
so was the feeling that we would eventually get married, or at least be
together for the rest of our lives and Darren felt the same. So a marriage
proposal wasn’t something that would have surprised me.
Will you marry me?
However, the way the proposal was made did! Some girl’s fantasise
about the day that the man of their dreams would propose to them. I wasn’t
one of those girls, and it is probably just aswell! It was the summer
of 2001 and we had been to ALOT of weddings, which had both of us thinking.
That August, Darren’s brother was getting married and the night
before the wedding, we were having a few drinks to send him on his way,
so to speak. When we had a quiet moment alone, Darren, who, in as merry
spirits as I was, said, ‘I really want to ask you to marry me, but
I want to wait for the right time’. All I could do was laugh and
think, ‘well, what’s wrong with now?’ So he did. It
may not have been Paris, there may not have been a ring, but the front
room of Darren’s brothers house holds a very happy, sweet memory
for me. I made him propose again the night of the wedding, on the shores
of a Killarney lake under the August moon…well even this girl does
like some romance! We kept it to ourselves for a year, until we booked
the hotel last August. Of course, both of our families would tell you
that it was the worst kept secret in modern history!
Everyone was delighted, but not surprised by our news. I don’t
have a ring yet for two main reasons. Firstly, we bought and moved into
our house in the past 10 months…priorities, priorities!! Secondly,
I haven’t seen one I would give my right arm for (not the left arm
though, I need that for the ring), and I have been warned by many wise
women to choose carefully. So I am currently in engagement limbo, officially
speaking, which is fine for me.
And as for the wedding plans, the diary of the reluctant bride begins
here!!
Siobhan...
|
