Robert and I both studied in Stellenbosch. We sat in the same English lecture hall for three years, we lived in the same street, we went to the same hangouts and we even shared a friend, but we never met.
Only a decade after all that, fate brought us together.
We met at a mutual friend's house one evening in April 2012. My friend, Willie who was a teacher at the same school where Robert taught, invited me to his friend's house for a "cook out" evening where everyone was asked to bring a different course. I had to bring starters, and when I got out of the car with my platter of mini pancakes I met Robert. Being the gentleman that he is, he offered to pour me a glass of wine in the kitchen. And the rest, as they say, is history.
We went away for a weekend to a beautiful farm near Montague. The Saturday morning Robert and I went for a walk in the mountains. The plan was to get to the top and to have our sandwiches and coffee there. But as we got closer to the top we saw that there were some noisy baboons blocking our way and they seemed to have some kind of disagreement among them. So, not wanting to push our luck, we decided to rather have our sandwiches on a rock where we found ourselves.
I noticed that Robert wasn't quite himself, rather nervous and not very talkative. When we finished our breakfast and started heading down again he suddenly stopped me.
He got down on one knee and that's when I knew that I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.
One of the biggest highlights was having my 3 best friends and my sister as my bridesmaids, and having them all together again after nearly 12 years of being apart.
We were friends since university days, but two of them moved overseas - one to England and the other to Norway. I was so lucky to have them fly down for the wedding. My four bridesmaids really pulled out all the stops to make me feel special.
The two days before the wedding they booked us in at Spier Hotel where we caught up on old times - with lots of bubby and a series of spoils, like spa treatments and a surprise bachelorette with a very special, very naughty cake.
The time spent with my bridesmaids was truly unforgettable.
We went to Thailand for two weeks - 5 nights in Phuket, 4 nights in Koh Samui and 2 nights in Bangkok. It was such a wonderful experience since it was my first time being overseas.
Instead of reading our wedding vows in front of everyone in the church, we decided to write letters to each other with our vows in them. We read our letters to each other privately on the beach, which was truly romantic.
Our photographer was the talented Nikolai Polzenhagen. He worked his magic amidst a crisis - when we arrived at our reception we saw that the DJ didn't pitch up.
Everyone was frantically phoning around, trying desperately to get a DJ - even Nikolai. Amidst all this chaos, we still were able to get beautiful pictures.
Beanstalk Functions handled the arrangements with the venue, the decor, the bar service and the catering
