Once Shane turned 16 he had changed a little and we became friends and from then we started seeing one another and fell in love right away. Given we were so young it was a very intense relationship but at the same time it was really so much fun.

By the time we were 21 we had purchased our first home and at 24 Shane proposed on bended knee in our lounge whilst I ate a vegemite sandwich. So in March 2002 we were engaged.

We set our wedding date for the 28th of February 2004, which gave us around 14 months to plan and arrange everything. It wasn't a simple exercise due to our location. Most of my purchases were done elsewhere and always required travelling and sometimes overnight stays. Some of the more challenging moments in our planning were the constant meetings at the church with the Reverend and the questionnaire, around 300 questions and the ongoing counselling they tried pushing onto us. Also, some family members were pushing to invite people that we did not have on our guest list, but we got over this fairly quick as they where happy to compromise and everyone was happy in the end, with our final number of 130 guests.

On our wedding day there was a beautiful clear blue sky and it was around 28 degrees which totally suited me as I love the heat. The day progressed without any major problems, although there were a couple of hiccups along the way. One bridesmaid had a broken zipper on her dress just as we were leaving for the church which created some panic and unfortunately had to be pinned as there was no time to fix it. Another Bridesmaid broke the new full length mirror we were using to help dress ourselves with her bum it was actually very funny.

We held our ceremony at St Saviours Cathedral, really beautiful we had the bells ringing and arrived in Rolls Royce?s which I loved. My father walked me down the aisle to the traditional music. The ceremony lasted 30 minutes, during which I had trouble getting Shane's Wedding band on and his groomsmen had painted HELP ME! on the bottom of Shane's shoes which everyone had seen when we had to kneel down.

Once the ceremony was over it was a more relaxed atmosphere where we could enjoy a beer and a laugh while having photos. We had arranged for a magician/comedian to be at the reception to free up a little of Shane and my time so we could mingle with our guests or just steal a few minutes alone. The day flew by and come 1am my husband and I were the very last to leave but we didn't want to go we really were enjoying ourselves so much.

Our reception was what I had really put the most effort into. The decorations were stunning white chair covers and tablecloths a red carpet from the entrance to the easel sails and backdrops with fairy lights urns and candelabras and gorgeous flower arrangements. LOVED IT!

One thing I would change would be to have been much more specific/firm with our Photographers as we had hardly any photos with my side of the family which still and will forever frustrate my mother and nanna to no end.

We honeymooned at Kani in the Maldives 7 nights and on to Singapore for 3 nights and home. Maldives was beautiful and very very very relaxing. We had a bungalow over the water went snorkelling with the local fishermen the staff were lovely but the other guests weren't too friendly not like us Aussies but we weren't there for the guests so we learnt to ignore them.