Our story

Blogging

It all began on January the 25th 2009 when Bekki wrote a post on her blog called On dating (or lack of it). In that post Bekki explained that she was unhappy with being single, and wondered how to go from where she was now to being in a relationship, she ended the post with "So, right, where does that leave me? With no idea of what to do. Any suggestions? Any single male Christian friends you can set me up with? (Preferably local, rather than say, across the Atlantic). Anyone out there want to say hello?". On the 29th Rob came across this post and wrote a reply which began 'Hello there :-)'.

Despite the leading beginning to his reply, in that original post Rob was just intending to be helpful to Bekki, to tell her what it's like being a single man in the church, and to give her advice on how to best approach men (you can read those comments here). Over the next three days we exchanged 20,000 words by email, and arranged to meet one another at that Saturday's City Church Cambridge (Bekki's church) ceilidh.

At this point Rob wasn't sure what was going to happen at the ceilidh, although he thought Bekki sounded quite interesting. Bekki, as she told her friends Liz and Nathan, "being a girl and therefore able to do hello to wedding dress in 2 seconds flat, might have got just the teeniest bit over-excited." She resolved to try to contain her excitement and just see what happened. Rob went shopping with one of his closest female friends Suzanne to get new clothes to wear, after hours wandering through stores he found a pair of new trousers he liked, which caused Suzanne to exclaim "But they're identical to the one's you're wearing!".

Meeting 'In Real Life'

Outside the ceilidh Rob was so nervous he was thinking about going home without going in, but Rachael Churchill encouraged him to go in. After a few minutes Bekki came up, stood really close, and chatted with him. Rob invited Bekki to his church (Holy Trinity Cambridge) the next morning as Nicky Gumbel (well known because of the Alpha course) was preaching at Holy Trinity (well, that and he wanted to see her again...). Bekki took Rob by the hand (which she rarely let go of all night) and led him around the dance floor. After the ceilidh Bekki was definitely very interested in Rob and so excited about seeing him again next morning that she barely slept, but Rob was confused, did this girl like him? He called his friends and said "I'm very confused - I think this girl thinks we're already going out with each other!"

The next day, in church Bekki snuggled up to Rob during the service. Rob was still unsure about whether Bekki liked him or not so when at the end she asked "Are you going to introduce me to people?" he asked "How shall I introduce you?", "As a friend" she replied. So that's what he did... but at Costa Coffee immediately afterwards he had to tell Bekki that he really liked her, and she let him know that she really liked him too.

Afterwards we went to CB2 to get something to eat (Rob braving the snow in just a short sleeved T-shirt). Bekki asked Rob to be in charge of "Making sure the relationship doesn't go too fast" as she thought she might make it go too fast, adding a few minutes later "... and we can't get married this year because my sisters are getting married this year.". Topics of conversation included how many children Bekki wanted to have (a maximum of six (or seven, depending on who is doing the remembering)) and whether Bekki was now Rob's girlfriend (she didn't immediately like the term, but Rob explained that people would get confused if she wasn't called my girlfriend but acted like she was). So on the afternoon of the 1st of February after having been in contact online for a week, and having met one another the day before, we were officially going out.

The engagement

Fairly early on Rob had decided that he wanted to marry Bekki, but it took her a bit longer to decide, and she changed her mind a few times (from 'yes' to 'let's wait longer' and back again). We went to the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham to look for engagement rings. Bekki saw a ring that she loved, a ring that was very different from other engagement rings and 'very me'. Rob arranged for an identical ring to be made in her size, and we went home. The jewellers had said it would take about three weeks to make the ring, but Rob had secretly discovered that it might be ready slightly before then. So on the Friday when the ring was ready he left Cambridge at 6AM so he could pick it up from Birmingham and get back to Cambridge without arousing Bekki's suspicions. Bekki recounts the next part of the story in her blog post:

On Saturday, he turned up at my house at 10.30, when I was just awake and dressed and insisted that we had to go for a walk now, as it was going to pour with rain later. I rushed out, half awake, but happy when he suggested going to Beechwoods, my favourite spot. We wandered around the woods, holding hands, enjoying the peacefulness (and spotting dogs) and Rob began telling me how much he loved me and lots of other wonderful things. As we kissed, he complained that I'd smooshed up his glasses (as usually happens) and pulled his glasses cleaning cloth out of his pocket. As he did, out fell a ring! He went down on one knee and asked if I would marry him. Delighted, I said "Yes!"

We stood in the woods and hugged and kissed and then got jumped at by an over enthusiastic Labrador, which made me laugh out loud. Who knows what the dog walkers thought.