26 years and still going strong!

When we got married, my husband and I had a mortgage each, I had two jobs, my husband was still studying for his professional exams and, although we were happy, we hardly had any spare cash. I really wasn’t fussed about having a fancy wedding and would have been content to just elope but my husband wanted to ‘do it properly’. Despite finding some real bargains, how we ever managed to pay for it all was nothing short of miraculous but it was certainly worth it - it was a wonderful day, surrounded by all our family and friends. I’m very glad we didn’t ‘elope’!

The traditional theme for a 26th wedding anniversary is apparently ‘pictures’ and, coincidentally, I found the photos of our honeymoon when I was sorting out the garage last week. Because many of our guests had come from all over the world for our wedding, we couldn’t leave them and go off straight away for two weeks so we planned to just spend a couple of days in Brighton then have a proper honeymoon a few weeks later. We couldn’t find a hotel in Brighton as it was the Labour Party conference so we ended up in Bognor Regis - romantic, eh?!?

Our ‘real’ honeymoon is still the best holiday I’ve ever had - an Airtours Mediterranean cruise starting in Majorca and stopping at Malta, Sicily, Rhodes, Crete, Israel, Egypt (where my blip was taken, in case you thought it was Bognor!) and Cyprus. It was an amazing adventure and ridiculously cheap… and we won a couple of quizzes, the Bingo, and I discovered a natural talent for roulette, so our bar bill was pretty well covered, too! We really did get lucky.

Two things about our honeymoon still make me laugh. The first was when I proudly announced over dinner that my husband had been offered six camels for me and a guy at our table said 'They must have been ugly camels.' Charming! The second was on the plane home, three days before Christmas. I'd gone to 'freshen up' while we were waiting for our after-dinner coffee. When I got back to my seat, all the men near us were looking at me with rather shocked expressions. Turns out my husband had eaten the chocolate Santa I'd been saving... and they'd all been worried about my reaction! No problem, I've got him back many times over the years since...

I had to laugh as I was looking through our honeymoon photos as the rings in the binder have now rusted over time. Thankfully, twenty-six years in, our marriage hasn’t!