I know, I know the title doesn’t bode well does it but it’s the truth!

Both of us had been married before & we’d both said we’d never get married again & still to this day I’ve got no idea when I suddenly changed my mind!

Ok let’s roll back the years to January 2004 ( have you worked out what year it was?) it was a leap year! I think Ian had an idea I’d propose on valentines day, ha how wrong was he?

I decided to ask him on his birthday, well not quite ask but I’ll come to that! So I’ll set the scene:-

Ian had been in court supporting a fellow worker, & he won so they went to the pub after for a couple of drinks, he ended up later than he thought so I had to dash into town to pick him up. I’d booked a table for a curry for us all at 6pm, it was 5:25 when he said he was still in town!

He’d had a couple of drinks during the afternoon & then had a couple more with the meal. We got home & the kids went off to bed & I gave him his birthday present. It was a heart shaped bottle filled with rum (his favourite!) Not very exciting I hear you say, well on the bottle was written “Will you marry me?” awwwwwwwwwww bless.

I waited about 10 nano seconds for him to reply …………..  ”No” & that was that!!! How did I feel? Other than a bit silly nothing, after all he’d always said he didn’t want to get married again so fair enough.

I got some nail varnish remover & wiped the message off the bottle & just gave it back to him. He just said I should’ve asked him another time! Errr nope that was a 1 off & wasn’t going to be repeated!

The next day we carried on as normal, although he was quite quiet, but he went off to play dominoes & I didn’t even think about it. He got back & he once again said he was sorry & that he did love me, I knew that regardless, I didn’t need a ring or a different name to tell me that.

Yet again he said he loved me & then the next bit shocked me, he just turned round & said he would marry me! Ok I’m not often stuck for words but that stunned me! I didn’t say anything for a bit, then just picked up my phone & rang my mom (it was about 11:45pm) & told her we were getting married! Lol now why would I tell him 1st that I would!

I had wanted to get married whilst we were on holiday but I wasn’t sure how easy that was going to be without him knowing so I did the “bottle”.

We had already booked a holiday to Egypt about 7 weeks later so decided to use it as our honeymoon, so 6 weeks later we got married, we had the most perfect wedding at the gorgeous registry office in Stratford-upon-Avon with just 19 of us there. We’d both had the big wedding the 1st time round so this was a day just for us.

It was really easy to get it all arranged at short notice, probably the hardest was the wedding rings, I didn’t bother with an engagement ring as it was all happening so quickly. I knew in my mind what kind of ring I wanted & found a great jeweller who made it for me & designed Ian’s ring how I wanted it. I had diamonds inset into my ring.

The other ring I now wear is a copy of my late mom’s engagement ring.

We went to a local pub for a meal & then headed back to ours to end the perfect day watching England play rugby!

We had a great holiday/honeymoon & had decided to have a party when we got back, but it was only a party not a wedding reception! It was great to get everyone together, we had friends come from all over the country & a good friend in USA even rang me during the party which was amazing.

Twice in a month I wore a dress!!

8 years down the line we’re still married!! Would I change the way we did it? No I wouldn’t, it was perfect.