Steve  & Laura Cocks,
Married Sunday, 16 October 2005

Steve and I met through an online dating service, www.rsvp.com.au. Having read my profile, he told me that I was everything that he was looking for in his ideal partner. Steve is the man I have always dreamed about meeting! He has all the qualities I look for in a man ... and then some!

After sending several emails back and forth, we started phoning each other and our conversations would last hours! We arranged to meet the following Saturday at the Botanical Gardens for lunch, but we were both so eager to meet face to face so I told Steve that I would be in hospital overnight on the Tuesday following a procedure, and that he could come and visit me there.

Sure enough Steve came to visit me in hospital. He walked into my room and gave me a single long stem red rose ... it was beautiful. Dressed in my pink love heart pj's, I took Steve by the hand and led him down to a nearby TV room. Steve wrapped his arms around me and we looked into each other's eyes. We both felt the chemistry between us and we kissed for the first time... . We have been at each other's side ever since!

Steve proposed to me on the evening of Christmas Day 2004, having asked my father earlier that day. We had talked about getting engaged on Christmas Eve which is my birthday but when he didn't ask, I thought he was going to wait a while. He asked me on Christmas Day, in his sister's kitchen, when we got a quiet moment alone. I thought he was joking and didn't answer! I was watching the look on his face and realised he was disappointed! I asked him if he was serious. He said, "Yes!" I apologised and asked him to get down on his knees but he said he had a sore knee! I jokingly told him to find a bit of carpet to kneel on! He asked again, this time producing a ring! I said, "Yes!" Steve took me totally by surprise! He had purchased an engagement ring for me without my knowledge and it was perfect! I love it!

We planned to wait at least a year before getting married but I became very ill and was in a coma for 5 days following unexplained respiratory failure! I had nearly died and discovered I had less than 40% chance of survival! One of the first things that I said when coming out of the coma was, "So, when are we getting married?"

I finally got out of hospital about two weeks later but could hardly move due to muscle deconditioning! My health was very fragile. I was told by the doctors that it would take six to twelve months to fully recover .... forever the optimists we chose to marry in October which would give me eight months to recover. We had always been keen on a Spring wedding.

We started thinking about our wedding plans soon after I came out of hospital but we were reluctant to make any firm plans until my health started to improve. We joked around a lot about where we'd get married ... including in the respiratory ward of the hospital, since we spent so much time there!

In August 2004, about two weeks before we met, I had attended the official launch of the David Hookes Foundation transplant bus which is one of those long bendy buses, decked out as a huge bill-board to advertise 'Organ Donor Awareness'. The bus has the faces of ten transplant recipients on both sides of the bus and I am one of them. One day I joked to Steve that we should get the David Hookes Foundation bus as our wedding vehicle! Everything snowballed from there!

Steve got on the phone to TransAdelaide who now own the bus which was generously donated by the David Hookes Foundation to raise awareness for organ donation. Steve made many phone calls to find out if it would be possible to get the bus. With the help of Liberal MP The Honourable Julian Stefani, strings were pulled and we managed to secure the bus and a driver for the day! The next hurdle was getting traffic control organised as we needed two lanes of traffic blocked off on the very busy road where we were getting married in the middle of! Yes, we got married on the medium strip on Port Road, Hindmarsh, opposite the Adelaide Entertainment Centre!

It was no ordinary medium strip though! On this particular section of medium strip is 'The Gift of Life Garden' which is a rose garden established in loving memory of organ donors and their families. A friend and fellow double lung transplant recipient, Steve Cavallo, had the brilliant idea of getting married at the Gift of Life Gardens. He had planned to get married there but I understand his wife to be was too nervous. He put us in touch with the mayor of Charles Sturt Council, Mayor Harold Anderson, and we later got permission to marry there. These plans were started about six months before our wedding but were only officially confirmed about a week before our wedding!!

The weather on our wedding day was perfect. We had been worried because it rained the day before but it was a lovely sunny 26 degrees and the grass and trees were lovely and green. Only one white rose was in bloom but the garden still looked lovely and it was decoration enough for our special day! As the wedding party stepped out of the bus, 'The Promise' by Enya was playing. The atmosphere was very relaxed and filled with love and friendship. Due to the theme of our wedding, 'Organ Donor Awareness', the use of the chairs for our wedding were generously donated by Festival Hire. Our wedding was open to all transplant recipients, donor families, people waiting for transplants, friends and family, and the public. Both Steve and I were surprisingly calm, even when being interviewed by Channel 10 to be shown on the news that night!

To help us promote Organ Donor Awareness, we got Bernie Morellini, the president of Transplant Australia (South Australian division), to find a young boy and girl who had had transplants to be our page boy and flower girl. Transplant Australia put us in touch with two families whose child had each had a liver transplant earlier this year. Joesphine was nearly six years old and Taij nearly three years old. We met Joesphine and family a week before our wedding. We met Taij and family the day before our wedding! Steve, myself and the two families had a lovely picnic lunch together to get acquainted and put the kids at ease with us. They are all great people and we will remain close friends for many years to come.

During our ceremony one of my sisters read two poems about organ donation that she wrote especially for the day; My mum read a thanksgiving; and tribute was read for my donor and also for a special friend of mine that gave me the strength to carry on. A tribute was also read for Steve's second cousin Steven, who was tragically killed in a motor bike accident. Steven had been an organ donor and his generosity saved the lives of five people. In fact, we married on the eight anniversary of his death.

We had our reception at the hall adjacent to St. Peter's Cathedral. My parents generously paid for caterers to serve on the day which really took the pressure off. Mum made some beautiful table decorations for the day. I had prepared some CD's prior to the day with a variety of love songs. We just sat our portable CD player in a corner and had lovely background music. We planned a short reception, two hours, because I tire easily and we knew it would be a long day.

We would have loved to have gone somewhere tropical but I am on a Disability Support Pension and Steve is my full time carer so we're no millionaires! My parents generosity shone through again ... they treated us to two nights at the Oaks Plaza Pier Hotel in Glenelg. We had a beautiful room on the sixth floor, overlooking the ocean. We enjoyed a couple of very relaxing days away from home.

Steve contacted many people with regard to publicity for the day. Of those contacted, Channel 10 came to our ceremony and interviewed us. The interview was shown nationally on the evening of our wedding. We were also featured in our local paper. We are still pursuing other avenues in an effort to spread the word about the need for organ donors.