Our background…
We met in July 2009 and were set up through friends. OH is in the army and was based in Guildford, Surrey at the time, only an hour’s drive from where I live here in Kent.
I’d gone through a horrible breakup and my friend wanted to cheer me up, so forced me to go and visit her boyfriend with her (now her husband, he’s in the army too!) on the promise that he’d bring out a “hot mate”! So I went with her and that’s how we met. It was only meant to be a bit of fun but we were smitten with each other and 2 days later he came back to spend the weekend with me, and drunkenly asked me to be his girlfriend in a club that night (cheesy I know!)
The next day I woke up wondering if he even knew my surname, and having a laugh with my friend about what had happened the night before. Neither of us thought it would last as he was being posted to Germany at the end of November but the more OH & I saw of each other, the more we fell in love, and it didn’t take long to realise this was more than a bit of fun!
He moved to Germany in November 2009 and we were both heartbroken but determined to make it work. And it did! We spent hundreds a month on phone bills and travelling to see each other and had an extremely hard 3 years but we made it.
In July 2011, just before my 21st birthday, he asked me to marry him. We were both over the moon but shortly after OH got told that his posting, which was due to end that November and him come back to the UK, had been extended for another 2 years! After months of worrying and trying to work out what to do we decided I would move to Germany and we booked our wedding on 4th December 2011 for 10 months later! The planning was put on hold as a week later my Grandad went into hospital, and sadly died in February this year, so all of a sudden we were in March and I hadn’t booked a single thing other than the photographer and the venue, so the planning was a bit of a mad rush at first! Plus I had to do nearly everything on my own as OH was abroad but we managed to get everything done eventually.
Around this time OH also had been messed about for the umpteenth time to do with going to Afghan (a stress we didn’t need with what our family were going through!) and he decided to leave the army. Now not only did we have the stress of the wedding, but the stress of him leaving the army, where would we live, what if he couldn’t get a job, etc etc… we definitely had a very stressful time!
Leaving the army takes months but we were assured he would be out in plenty of time for our wedding – how wrong were we! Some of you may know the stresses we had in the weeks up to the wedding as OH was still in Germany, so we weren’t sure if he would be able to have any time off for the wedding or not, or if he’d have to go back to living in Germany after we were married etc… he eventually got to leave 2 days before our wedding!! Talk about last minute stress!!
And the rest is history…