Today (26th March) was very nearly my 30th wedding anniversary.
You seem, a long long time ago, I was actually engaged to be married to somebody else.
It all happened in the twelve months after I was kicked out of home, so my head (and my heart) wasn’t in a very good place.
In hindsight, I was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (from growing up with a mother possessed by a severe mental illness). I was desperate for love and security so when the fellow I had only just started seeing wanted to marry me, I thought it was the answer to all my problems.
But as the old saying goes, it was more a case of leaping out of the frying pan, into the fire!
My First Engagement
Within weeks of getting together he was already paying off a ring we had chosen. It was a spray of six diamonds around a sapphire, set in yellow gold (completely different to what I now have, a white gold solitaire!), and I knew he was going to propose one night when we went out for dinner (4th July 1987 if memory serves me correctly).
I thought it was what I wanted, but when he got down on bended knee in the middle of the crowded restaurant, suddenly I just *knew* it was all wrong. But how could I say “no” in front of a room full of people?
We scarcely had two beans between us, so I began planning a wedding on a shoestring budget, and even bought a dress.
We were to be married at the church we both attended at the time, with a “finger food” reception to follow in the hall downstairs. I’d booked the church, the caterers, the photographer, had a veil and headpiece on layby. The bridesmaids would be my two sisters, and his sister, and I’d already picked out their hot pink taffeta dresses (well, it was the 80’s after all!).
And then I went and dislocated my knee, meaning I couldn’t work for at least six weeks, and had no income. How on earth was I going to pay rent AND a wedding, with no money?
So the wedding which we’d initially begun planning for December, was postponed until 26 March 1988.
When I went back to work, one of my colleagues had moved into another section, and I had a new workmate at the desk next to mine. Yup, you guessed it – my hubster.
Working together every day, we soon became friends and before long I realised that I liked him. I mean, REALLY liked him.
Why I Broke My Engagement
I never dreamed that we would have a future together, but I knew enough to realise that being attracted to somebody else while I was already engaged was NOT a good sign. It gave me the courage to break things off.
In many ways it was a really difficult time in my life. My little sister got married (BEFORE me, how rude!), and a lot of my so-called church friends ditched me for daring to be so rebellious as to break an engagement (I was a bit of a scarlet woman!). And of course, my future in-laws didn’t want to know me either. By the time my 21st birthday rolled around in January 1988 I felt very alone, even though I’d recently started dating my Bear.
The odd time I have found myself looking back and wondering “What If?” – I can guarantee that it would have ended in divorce, a long time ago.
I’m pretty sure that even though it wasn’t easy, a broken engagement was a lot easier to endure than a broken marriage.
And it also meant that my story has a very happy ending. A little over two years later I married my soulmate and we are still going strong nearly 28 years later … ain’t love grand?!
Any other runaway brides out there?!