It sounds like something out of a storybook but the moment my eyes fell on Nina in that first business meeting, I knew that I would marry her. Every day that we spent together in that first couple of months reinforced the feeling I had had the first time we had met.
Tell us a little about yourselves, what you do, what you love…
N: I was born and raised in the UK and relocated to Hong Kong in 2017 for work. I’d visited Hong Kong plenty of times before and had always loved the ex-pat lifestyle here. You truly have the best of everything. Hong Kong can feel like a concrete jungle with the same hustle and bustle of NYC, but within 30-minutes you can find yourself wakeboarding, hiking, camping or just soaking up the sun on one of their many island beaches. I’m a city girl at heart, but I love anything fitness related, so HK offers the perfect balance for me. I work at a niche tech headhunting firm focused on investment banks, hedge funds, prop trading firms, blockchain, crypto, etc.
D: I was born in Abu-Dhabi but grew up in Hong Kong until I was around 10. Having returned to the UK, I decided to do a full-circle and come back to Hong Kong in 2012 to take my career to the next level in financial services. I love anything related to tech, crypto, building stuff, boats, Liverpool football club and my wife! I should probably add fitness into there somewhere (completely influenced by Neen, of course).
How/where/when did you meet – and what were your first impressions?
N: We met in 2017 through work, I’d just moved to Hong Kong, and he was one of the first meetings locked into my diary by my MD. I’d spent the past few years dating sporadically in the UK – I think I’d always known I’d never settle there, so in hindsight, it makes total sense why nothing serious had come from anything. I had always been drawn to the idea of relocating to Asia and finally made plans to in Oct 2017 when the right opportunity came through. I came here with the notion to focus fully on my career – I truly wasn’t looking for love (as cliché as that sounds), but now that I think about it, the saying “it happens when you’re not looking” makes perfect sense. We met in a meeting setting, so my first impression was truly professional. I tease David a lot, as I thought he came across as very difficult to read, totally serious and quite tough to work with. However, our experience of working together was the complete opposite, he was super passionate and extremely driven, which are attributes I respect a lot. Fast-forward a couple of months later, he invited me for drinks and the rest is history!
D: It sounds like something out of a storybook but the moment my eyes fell on Nina in that first business meeting, I knew that I would marry her. It was that simple and I said this to my sister that night who told me to dream on! It just so happens at the time I had just started seeing a French girl. I had an easy choice to make and thankfully as we hadn’t been seeing each other for very long, making my apologies wasn’t a big deal. This freed me up to make things happen with Nina! Every day that we spent together in that first couple of months reinforced the feeling I had had the first time we had met. We had our first holiday together that year. It was on this holiday that we first told each other how we felt about the other and never looked back!
When did you first realise that this was someone, you’d like to spend the rest of your life with?
N: Everything was easy with David, that was truly the biggest sign for me. I wasn’t anxiously overthinking or complicating any of it. He was also a perfect gentleman. I recognised so many attributes in David, which I truly valued in a partner…honesty, loyalty, intelligence, supportiveness and so much more.
D: Everything was light-hearted with no pressure, the ease of being your total self with someone was something I hadn’t truly experienced before. We could talk about anything, and we were really aligned about our core values and what we wanted in life. There was a sense of maturity about the whole thing, no games, just two people who connected on many levels and just really enjoyed each other’s company.
N: I also love how he made such an effort to pay interest in anything I was passionate about, despite being totally clueless! Seeing him pretend to feel the same amount of enthusiasm from 7 am gym sessions or visiting one of many new vegan restaurants, was sweet!
Was there a proposal? Tell us a little about it…
N: David whisked me away one Friday after work to Borneo for the weekend. I had a slight inkling that something was going on… so promptly had my nails done lol. Friends told me to look for the signs “he’ll be really nervous that weekend!” or “he may seem a little off…”, so I was desperately searching for the signs from the airport to the hotel, but he was so cool, calm, and collected. That weekend, he had zero plans in place, and he even sneakily asked a hostess to turn us away from a restaurant saying they were fully booked, which really threw me off. After all, this weekend should be planned like clockwork, right? At that point, I decided to throw caution to the wind and knock a few cocktails back and truly let my hair down. He said there was another small restaurant along the beachfront we could try, so I walked alongside him until I spotted a beautiful private dining set up, with candles, music, the works. I had genuinely forgotten about the proposal (thanks to a few Cosmo’s!) and enjoyed our dining experience. The next thing I notice is David down on one knee proposing, me saying yes and clumsily calling all our family members to share our news…
D: I started thinking about engagements during our first year. What Nina didn’t know is that during a trip back to the UK over Christmas in 2018, I had asked Nina’s father (and mother) if I could marry their daughter. Given I had only met them both for the first time a couple of days before this, this was quite a nerve-racking thing to do. Thankfully, I had their approval. I now had to decide where I would propose, book, come up with a cover story, buy the ring and write my proposal. I had settled on a beautiful hotel in Borneo (it was on our list of places to visit), had a beautiful ring made (after doing a mountain of research on the 4 “C”s…) and had most of the staff in on what was happening this weekend. I was calm about things, I guess you naturally are when things feel so right.
By Saturday evening, I could tell Nina wasn’t hopeful of a proposal – she was off the scent completely, thanks to the “fully booked” reservations at the hotel restaurants. After we got to the beach set up, we had some food, wine, and the proposal. What followed are words for ears only.
Suffice to say, we celebrated our first year of marriage yesterday!
- Tell us about the vision you had for the mood or style of your wedding…
N: Our original wedding was a destination wedding in Mykonos, at a hotel we fell in love with; I’d planned a weeks’ worth of guest activities and pre-wedding events, so it’s safe to say my Pinterest board was thriving! I wanted to go for earthy warm tones, lots of pampas grass, candles galore, the list was endless. Looking back, it’s so easy to see how the true meaning of the occasion can get completely lost throughout the process of wedding planning. When covid hit, we had to reassess everything and what was truly important to us. We didn’t want to delay our wedding, so decided to go ahead with a micro-wedding in Hong Kong with our closest friends at our favourite rooftop and restaurant. We had plans of doing a big party the following year with our families and friends from the UK, so I was really relaxed when planning this mini wedding – it was relatively stress-free and I kept everything super simple, from my dress to our décor, really focusing on the venue, food and of course, the drinks. In hindsight, I am so glad I didn’t have the wedding I had planned in Mykonos – it was way too OTT and if I were to plan an event there again, I’d be going in with a very different perspective, which I’m happy about. I would recommend a small, intimate ceremony in a heartbeat to anyone! Forget the noise, focus on you two and what the big day is truly about.
D: One where Nina was happy.
What was one element you were happy to splurge on?
N: I’ve been to so many weddings in the past and the best ones were always the ones where wedding guests felt truly looked after and had so much fun! So great food and more importantly, free drinks were always something I didn’t want to compromise on. Even if it wasn’t the big wedding I had once hoped for, I wanted everyone who came, whether it was 10 or 50 people to truly enjoy themselves. I think eventually, I would still love to host our family and friends in Mykonos to celebrate properly with everyone we love, but right now we have no clue when things will return to normality, so it’s tough to say when that will happen.
D: As was the case for so many in 2020 doing a COVID wedding, restrictions and quarantine meant that it was difficult nigh impossible to travel. We still want to get married as we had previously planned, in Mykonos albeit in a couple of years time when things return to “normal” and we can all travel without risk.
I so desperately want to give my beautiful wife Nina the wedding of her dreams. One where all our family and friends can help us celebrate and make Nina feel like the princess she is. It’s not a case of if, only when we can make it happen.
Did anything happen on the wedding day that you laugh about in hindsight (even if it was stressful at the time)?
N: Yes! I had a nightmare with my wedding dress the day before the wedding. I arrived at the Mandarin Oriental hotel and unpacked everything – as I unzipped my dress out of its bag, I was horrified to see huge black cloudy marks all over my pristine white dress, which had been untouched since I first tried it on. I rang David immediately in a frantic panic (if I didn’t have a bridezilla moment before, now was my 1st!) luckily David was super calm as always and said don’t worry – let’s call the concierge and ask them to dry clean it right away, it’ll be totally fine. A lovely lady came immediately and also calmly reassured me they’ll take care of it. I carried on with my busy day and tried my best not to think about it – I think having very calm people around you on your wedding week is a huge tip, everyone’s calmness in our (my) moments of stress, honestly had a rippling effect. That night I returned from dinner to see my dress hanging perfectly in my wardrobe, pressed, and cleaned to perfection! Easy to laugh about now, but during the time when all our wedding plans were constantly changing re: covid, it felt like the final straw!
D: I think just navigating through the ever-changing rules and restrictions in HK was most stressful. A few days before our “micro-wedding” there were new rules enforced around social gatherings both inside and within outdoor venues too, so we had to regretfully cut our (already small) guestlist in half and find a new venue. We ended up with a rooftop ceremony at one of our favourite spots, which actually worked out great. The photos with the HK skyline as the backdrop were epic too.
Tell us about your main outfits, what was unique, is there a story?
N: We decided to do a micro-wedding about 2-months before the actual date, so neither of us were able to have anything custom-made, as it would have taken months, plus there were tons of expected delays on deliveries, so we couldn’t risk anything being made outside of Hong Kong. For my dress, online shopping was great – I scoured what felt like 100s of websites and ordered around 10-dresses. All very simple and sleek, given the new vibe of this wedding. I was always pretty open-minded with wedding dresses, so didn’t put too much pressure on myself to find “the perfect dress” or to look a certain way. After all, this was the mini wedding! I bought some Jimmy Choo heels, did my own makeup/hair (never would have thought this!) and splurged on little things to make me feel my best leading up to the wedding and during the morning of.
D: I had spent months flicking through images on Instagram and Pinterest whilst I trying to decide what to wear on the day. In the end, I decided to keep things simple and opted for a greyish blue jacket, white shirt, blue trousers and brown loafers. Nina was generally supportive of me wearing something that I would choose. What’s most important is that Nina found the dress that she would dazzle in. And she did. She looked a million dollars and was the most beautiful bride.
Ceremony location The Murray Hong Kong / Photographer Kasia Kolmas Photography / Celebrant Bliss Celebrant Irene Lee / Flora Hong Kong Flower Market / Bride’s Dress Katie May / Groom’s Attire Paul Smith, Hugo Boss / Rings Bulgari / Bride’s Shoes Jimmy Choo / Makeup Bride / Flower Girl Outfit Next
