Before I met him...
I was only 22, single and was already living out of my parents house and lived in a caravan in the backyard of my friends place, my friend was living with her parents. I paid $30 per week which covered rent to stay there and for me to eat dinner with them every night in their house. The caravan contained a small bed, a little sink and a small cupboard to squeeze all my clothes in.
Yes It was hard to live in the caravan, especially if I needed to go to the toilet in the middle of the night in which I had to walk across the back yard into my friends house. It was either raining or dark and freezing cold. My friend also had about 7 maltese terrior dogs running in the yard so it was hard for me not to step on dog poop to and from the house which made my caravan smell a bit as dog poo was always stuck to my shoes. I couldnt exactly leave my shoes outside of the caravan either as the dogs would've had a fun time chewing them.
I used to have a bottle of red wine sitting by my bed and cans of tuna to snack on at night if I was hungry. I had no TV or radio in there so I tried to be out of there most of the time.
During the day though I worked as a Beautician. I was paid $350 per week which was pretty good considering I was on an apprenticeship. To gain extra cash on the side I used to work as a model for a centerfold magazine. For a 4 hour shoot I was paid $2.500 It was great money! But hey what wouldnt pay that sort of money when you're showing off your entire body to the public?
I also tried other things to bring in some money- lingerie waitressing, stripping in nightclubs, I even joined a girls strip group that was similar to 'Bad girls' and 'Man Power'...thats as far as I got. It was enough to pay my rent and to buy makeup, clothes and to look after my car. I also liked to party every weekend with my friend at our favourite night club that we visited every Friday and Saturday night, we always used to rock up at the joint at around 6.00 and stay there till 6am in the morning, smoking and drinking the night away.
When I met him...
So It was love at first sight... or so I thought it was at the time, I was sitting down at a table at my favourite night club, listening to the music while smoking my cigarette, sipping on my Jack Daniels and coke. I gazed my eyes upon a tall and handsome blue eyed stranger who was busy dancing all by himself, I tried to catch his eye (of course thats how we all used to pick up, well I did anyway...) He caught me staring at him and he danced over to me from the other side of the dance floor, "Hey Im David" he introduced himself as he shouted over the loud music, "Yeah hi im Tess", he then took my hand and we walked over to the dance floor. We danced, we smiled at each other, he taught me some moves, I was having a ball!
Of course It came a time when we had to call it a night, so before we left the club we had decided to exchange phone numbers. After that night we rang each other constantly and saw each other everyday. You could say by now we were considered to be in a relationship.
So living in a caravan as you would imagine wasnt fun which is why I spent all my time with Dave. His living situation was similar though, he lived with his parents who had a unit and had their garage converted to a bedroom where David lived. He had his own double bed and couch, tv and table. It was like a self contained flat except it had no kitchen, you couldnt tell that he was at his parents house. They were both upstairs in their unit so I didnt see them much. His parents would cook him dinner and then bring it downstairs for David to eat.
I never ate any of the food that David's parents cooked as I didnt really like his parents, and I dont think they liked me either. They didnt like the fact that I was over Dave's place all the time. David said that If I ever wanted to stay the night I would have to sneak in his window in the middle of the night because his parents were Christians and didnt like the idea of 'non christian' women like myself staying the night. Pfft! I didnt know what their problem was! Christianity...what in the heck is that all about? All I knew is that David's dad was a Pastor at some church, and his mum was following along too. David didnt like going to church and although I used to attend some Catholic church's now and then I thought going to church was a waste of time!
So yeah I thought it was fun and cheeky sneaking into his window. I used to park my car up the road of his street so his parents wouldnt notice I was there to stay the night just to be with him.
One day when I was there (not at night time, during the day) his dad walked in the door to Davids room, I was just sitting on the couch minding my own business when he asked me why I parked my car up the road the other night... I didnt say a word but David decided to say a few things to him to defend me, "Why are you always interferring with my life dad, and why cant you just leave me and my girlfriends alone?"
David always had disagreements with his father and at that point he wanted to just move out of the house into his own place. That gave David and I the idea to move in together so we could be alone.
We were only together for 3 months when we had decided that we wanted to move in together. It made sense...I was living in a caravan and David's parents were always giving him a hard time...perfect idea!
Not long did it take us to find a place, we found a 2 bedroom unit, 1 hour away from everyone that we knew, mainly to stay away from David's parents, and it only took 10min to walk to the beach, it was just beautiful and we were just so happy to have a life of our own. We found new jobs, I decided to work in a girls fashion clothes store, and David was running his own painting business.
I decided while I was living with this guy that it might be a good idea to introduce him to my parents, so we both arranged our flight tickets to Melbourne to visit them for a few days. My mum thought David was ok, but my dad didnt really take a shine to him. I dont know why but then again I dont remember my father liking any of my boyfriends that I used to bring home.
2 months later...
"Tess lets go out this weekend up to the wineries", "Ok, sounds good" I said.
The wineries was something that we had wanted to do for a while, we both loved good food and great wine and David thought it was a good way to spend a weekend.
He organised our room that we were going to stay in for two nights, and also organised to go on a tour to a wine tasting adventure, it included a stop at a restaurant for lunch. It was perfect weather for it too, nice and warm with light breezes that whistled through the trees.
During lunch on the tour David said to me "Wanna go for a walk up that hill over there?", "Yeah im up for that". We walked up the hill with our glasses of champagne that we hadn't quite finished with our meal, sipping away whilst walking up on the freshly cut grass, it was just beautiful.
David came to a stop, turned around to me and said, "Tess, do you love me?" "Yes of course I do, what sort of stupid question is that?" David dropped to his knee, opened up a little black box and showed me a gold ring with a gorgous marque diamond on it. At this point I was speechless as he said, "Will then will you marry me? Will you be my wife?"
I screamed with enjoyment, I also had a tear or two in my eyes, could this day get any better? "Of course I will!" as I tackled him on the grass trying to not break my champagne glass that was still in my hand, "Oh Dave, I couldnt be any happier!" he smiled, took the ring out of the box and placed it on my ring finger.
We both ran back down the hill laughing and joking around saying "Hello Mrs.. and Hello Mr..."
We announced to everyone on our tour group our great news and everyone congratulated us.
When we went back to our motel room, the first thing I did was called my parents, "Hi dad its me, guess what...Im getting married, David just proposed!" Dad was ok about it, he didnt seem as suprised as I thought he might be but congratulated me anyway. I spoke to mum and at least she was happy for me.
David then rang his parents but I dont know what their reaction was, I dont think they were suprised at the idea because David had been married before but divorced a few years before we had met, so it was really no new news to them. I didn't care, I was getting married and was dreaming about my wedding day already!
We had decided that we only wanted a a short engagement "Well we are getting married anyway arent we, so why wait?" David said. "Yes, I totally agree there" I said. We arranged the date to be 5 months down the track. "Yeah thats enough time to sort out the photographer, wedding cars, dresses, bridesmaids and groomsmen, church, reception room etc etc etc..." I said with laughter! "Well we dont need to invite that many people do we?" David asked, I said to him no as we didnt know that many people when we moved in the new area, so we had to make new friends who of course, we met through a nightclub...
So counting all the guests that we knew from our previous jobs, our new jobs, our parents and extended family we added around about 50 people attending our wedding. We decided that we wanted a cheap honeymoon to save a bit of money so we booked our plane tickets to QLD, Surfers Paradise.
Choosing my bridesmaids was easy, I had my best friend as my maid of honor, David's sister and a work friend of mine as the other bridesmaids, I also had David's 4 year old daughter (from his previous marriage) as my little flower girl.
David chose his brother as the best man and two of his work mates as the groomsmen. We chose princess limosines as our wedding cars, a white two tier cake with a green ribbon around it (as the bridesmaids dresses were green). We booked our wedding service at a local church and booked our wedding reception at The Crown Plaza opposite the beach near where we lived.
So it really didnt take us long to prepare for our big wedding day.
Part 2. The wedding (coming soon)
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