Sam and I have been together since we were teenagers. We met at college when I was doing art and he was studying music. Right from the start, we encouraged each others' 'strangeness', whether it was our joint interest in vintage clothing and skulls, or bonding over the same music – at the time we liked emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.
For the past 14 years, we’ve been each other's creative inspiration and have enjoyed hyping each other up. In late 2021, I was reading a book called A Tomb with a View: The Stories and Glories of Graveyards. I’d heard about it through cemetery enthusiasts on social media.
As you can tell by my wedding pics, cemeteries are a huge interest of mine...
There was a passage about Arnos Vale, a heritage site and Victorian cemetery in Bristol that was about to get bulldozed and turned into a housing estate. But the community bought it back for a pound and transformed it into a unique wedding venue. After reading the passage, I turned to Sam and said, "You can get married in this cemetery, how cool is that?" We were both sitting on the sofa when he turned round with the most serious face and said, "Well, let’s get married then.
" Even though I knew it was coming as we’d talked about getting married and I’d been measured for an engagement ring, I still didn’t expect the proposal. Sam took me on a surprise trip to Beeston Castle in Cheshire in February 2022, where he got down on one knee at the top of the castle, overlookin.