Rebecca + Mike by Danelle Bohane - Together Journal

Rebecca — Mike and I met at high school when I was 16 and he was 17. I’d actually had my eye on him for a while. We officially met through mutual friends and went on a date shortly after. When he picked me up, he was interrogated (as a joke) by my brothers about his intentions. That didn’t scare him away and a week later we were officially dating. Thirteen years later, here we are.

Mike — When we first met, I couldn’t work out why Rebecca was even talking to me. I thought she was way out of my league. But we got on well from the beginning and it felt as though we’d known each other a long time. Our personalities have always been a good match: we both have a silly sense of humour

Rebecca — Before we got engaged, it already felt like we were married. Mike has always been my biggest mentor and best friend and it didn’t take long before I knew I loved him. We got engaged after nine years together. Mike had a work trip to America, and we spent a few nights in San Francisco, then New York. He made sure I had a nice outfit to wear as we apparently had a formal dinner with clients to attend in NY. When we arrived, Mike told me the dinner had been brought forward, so we took a taxi over the Brooklyn Bridge. Mike wasn’t sure where he was going and couldn’t call the clients as he “didn’t have their number.”

We eventually arrived at a park with the most incredible view looking back over Manhattan. That’s when Mike asked me to marry him. We’ve always wanted a simple, non-traditional wedding and staying together the night before the wedding really helped calm any nerves. Originally, the dream was to have a small intimate overseas wedding with family, or on a boat, as we love spending time on the water. Then Covid hit so we put it off and decided to renovate our house.

Once all that stress was over, we decided we needed to get on with it. We set a date, which gave us a very short 10 weeks to prepare. This meant I couldn’t overthink my decisions. Having such little time to get a dress sorted was pretty stressful. Everything I tried on wasn’t right; nothing fitted the vision I had. Then I contacted Anita at Vinka. I didn’t think a dress could be made in that time frame but she put me at ease at our first meeting. Being a winter wedding, I wanted to have fun and be a little bold with the dress design. I wore detachable sleeves throughout the day and removed them for the reception.

On the morning of the wedding, we found out Mike’s parents had Covid. We pulled ourselves together and realised there wasn’t anything we could do. Luckily, we had planned to live stream the wedding for close friends and family so Mike’s parents were able to join in on that, along with the speeches. We got dressed up again a couple of months later to take more photos with them.