So, be warned, this is LONG. So much so I will post it in bits, with lots of obligatory flashes. This wedding features arrival of both bride and groom on a bike, an iconic venue in Newcastle, a Humanist ceremony, and a Japanese theme. Here goes...
Bit of background…
I met my husband at Durham University. He was in third year, I was a fresher. We met on my very first night out in a club we knew as Rixies. We chatted but nothing more. He doesn’t even remember this!
Fast forward two years later, we knew each other as acquaintances, the sort of person you stop to chat to if you walked past them in the street but no more. With him being two years ahead of me and with different friendship groups we never really saw much of each other. But it was the summer months, when Durham gets very quiet as all the students have gone home. I stayed in Durham as I was working at Next to earn some money and I didn’t really fancy going home as my parents were going through a divorce. I was walking back from work one day and bumped into my then future husband outside Waitrose. He was actually with his parents who were visiting for the weekend. We stopped to chat, and it turned out although he had just graduated from his 4 year course, he was staying in Durham to start his Phd. So of course, we made arrangements through facebook to do something together, as we were both pretty bored (again, there were no housemates or other students about). As our celebrant said in our wedding ceremony when telling the story of how we got together, there was nothing else better to do!
So he invited me to his place for dinner. It wasn’t explicitly a ‘date,’ just a meet up as friends. He cooked a stir fry which impressed me and made me think he was posh as it was quite exotic, I remember it had lychees in! After dinner we wandered into town and watched ‘Run, Fat Boy, Run’ at the cinema, which was pretty good. We discovered we shared a love of Simon Pegg. After the cinema we decided to go to the Lloyds bar nearby and have a few drinks. We couldn’t stop chatting, and ended up doing some Sambuca shots together, rather random. We then went to Loveshack, a club next door, and got even more drunk and danced lots. I remember wondering why we hadn’t been friends before as we were getting on very well indeed. We then walked back to his and listened to some music together, and ended up kissing on his sofa. This happened very naturally, neither of us made the first move, it just sort of happened. I then made the honourable suggestion that I should be getting home, and he walked me back. It must have been around 4am that he left as we chatted some more at my house and had a cup of tea I think. So although it was not intended to be a date, it kind of was, and then we kept seeing each other, for another 7 ½ years!
