Engagement

My impulsive decision making has been like gambling, make a snap decision and have no idea if it was going to have positive or negative result. Thankfully my impulse decision to propose to Shayne worked out.

From my past experiences I never knew how a relationship was going to go, there are too many variables from both sides that I just couldn’t plan for. I have tried to go into every relationship with an open mind and just enjoy the time I was having with a person. It didn’t always work though and I certainly know I am not always the easiest person to get along with.

When Shayne and I first met in 2007 there was a mutual attraction but there was a ten year age gap. We became close friends but never actually had a proper relationship until we contacted each other again in 2012. 

We decided to start dating in 2012, and had only been in a relationship for a few months when we found out she was pregnant with our first child. I spent the next several weeks, yep it was only weeks, thinking a fair bit about proposing but there was actually no doubt in my mind I needed to propose to her.

I flew to Hobart for Christmas and Shayne was due to fly in from Darwin a week later. My second day in Hobart I went to a jewellers shop and found an engagement ring, and bought it.

I only had a couple of days to think about how and where I was going to propose because I didn’t want to wait. I would like to have proposed somewhere meaningful to her but that pretty much ruled out anywhere in Tasmania because she had never been there before. Anywhere else in Australia, even the world, was going to be logistically too hard at that point in our lives. I lived in Perth, she had just moved to Darwin and the one true place I knew she would love to be proposed to was in another country.

The day Shayne flew in to Hobart it was blowing a gale. I was waiting at the airport and overheard a security guard telling someone they didn’t know if planes were going to be able to land and would probably have to divert to Launceston airport. I didn’t want to wait any longer to see her.

As I waited I saw her plane circling the airport, then they flew low over the runway as a test. They made two attempts to land but averted as they closed in on the runway. On their last approach the wind was that strong the plane was coming in on an angle pointed off to the side of the runway, and then they landed with a thump. What a welcome to Tasmania.

Location location location

I decided I was going to take her for a day drive up the east coast to Coles Bay. It had been my favourite spot since I was a kid. I have great memories of spending holidays up there in the pristine and quiet environment.

Since buying the engagement ring I had thought about calling Shayne’s dad to ask for his permission to marry Shayne but I hadn’t got around to it yet. On the morning we were going up the coast we needed fuel so I pulled into a service station. I wanted to call her dad and I had no idea when I was going to be able to; and what if he said no? I started filling the car up and Shayne luckily decided to walk over to McDonalds for some food.

I filled the car up and parked off to the side to call Shayne’s dad. I asked permission to marry Shayne and without hesitation he said, “Certainly mate, go for it”. Was that a good sign or not that he was so quick to respond?

I got off the phone and tried to hide my smile and excitement as she was walking back. We got in the car and headed off; she had no idea what I was planning.

When we arrived in Coles Bay my plan was for us to walk up over the hill and down to Wineglass Bay and propose to her on the beach, and in my head it all looked really good.

On holidays as a teenager I used to run a loop from the carpark, up over the saddle and down to Wineglass Beach, then through the bush track to Hazards Beach and around the coast track back to the carpark.

Unfortunately Shayne was at the tail end of recovery from damaging her ACL earlier in the year so it was still a bit sore if she walked too much; and the walk up the hill to the lookout was not easy for her. She thought I was punishing her for some reason but in true Shayne fashion of not liking to quit anything she kept pushing on.

As we made our way up the hill she was getting slower and slower from the pain. I started thinking, “This is not going the way I want it to”. I thought about other places I could propose but I couldn’t decide, or they were too far away to drive.

I thought, “Alright, there is a lookout up here at the saddle, we can make it to there and I can propose to her looking out over Wineglass Bay, brilliant.”

It wasn’t brilliant

As we got closer to the lookout I started to notice there were a lot more people around than I originally thought. We finally arrived at the lookout and it was packed, we could barely move. People were standing close together and climbing all over the rocks just to get a good view.

I stood there, annoyed, looking at all these people while I had my fingers tightly clamped on the ring in my pocket. I didn’t really have any doubt about her saying yes but I also wasn’t the type of person to propose in front of a crowd.

Being the tough girl she is, Shayne actually wanted to keep going on down to Wineglass Beach but I had no intention of carrying her back out if she couldn’t walk on her sore leg anymore. She could see I was frustrated and thought it was because of her but I was annoyed at the amount of people and not knowing what to do next. When I was a kid Coles Bay was not the tourist attraction it is today, it used to be just a quiet holiday destination mainly for local Tasmanian’s.

We took in the view and rested before making our way slowly back to the carpark. When we finally made it to the car we got in and drove off while I was still trying to work out my next move. We drove down the road and passed Freycinet Lodge, I told Shayne it was supposed to be a really nice place but I had never been in there. Just passed the lodge was another carpark which was at the end of Richardson’s Beach. We stopped and I convinced her to go for another walk along this quieter beach.

We took a leisurely stroll along the beach with no one else around and when we got to about half way along, I said I was going back to the car to get something; I dropped off behind her, got down on one knee and held the ring up. Shayne turned around, realised what I was doing and hobbled over to hug me as fast as she could before I could even finish asking her to marry me. When I finally spoke after all her excitement I said, “Well, was that a yes”, she said, “Yes, of course”.

In my mind the hardest part was done, all I had to do now was sit back and let my fiancée do all the work. Isn’t that what all women want, to organise and plan their perfect day? The man just needs to turn up.

Planning

Nope, I was quickly told it was a 50/50 deal and I wasn’t getting out of organising anything. Our first priority now was to have the baby and then plan the wedding.

When Harrison was only four months old we went back to Tasmania for a holiday; while there even I was impressed with our planning efforts. In two weeks we had the location, the celebrant, the flowers, the photographer, the hairdresser, the band, and the cake all organised to happen twelve months later. Everything just kept falling into place for us.

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The photographer was Owen Hughes, mum and dad had one of his books at home for years, I contacted him and he said he would be happy to chat about it. We drove up to Launceston to see him, after chatting for a bit we were happy with him and he was happy to be our photographer.

Shaye had been searching the net for a band when I thought about my high school music teacher. I reached out to him and he spoke to his band members from The Giant Hamsters, and they agreed to be the band for our wedding.

The celebrant was a wonderful lady who we met up with the day we were leaving Tasmania. We drove to Devonport to catch the Spirit of Tasmania and called in to visit her before boarding the ship. We left her place saying “She’s the one we want”.

One of Shayne’s relatives told us not to worry about the cake, she would organise it for us and it was going to be our wedding present from her. She organised two cakes, one chocolate for me and the other being a traditional fruit cake.

Our issue at the start was a florist. We had spoken to a few that said they would be unable to organise the flowers Shayne wanted for that time of year. No amount of begging or negotiating would make any of them budge. A few days later when we drove up to check out the wedding location, a place Shayne found online and fell in love with, we were chatting with the owner and mentioned about the flowers. She suggested we try the florist back down the road. So on our way back out we headed to the suggested florist, a tiny little shop in Latrobe, Flowers on Gilbert. Shayne showed a photo of the flowers and arrangement she wanted and the lady said, “Not a problem, we can easily do that for you, we will even deliver them to you at Hawley House on the morning of the wedding”. We were over the moon, so much organised in such a small space of time and all sorted without any major issues.

The next thing to organise was the invitations. That was not a fun experience. It took us a while to figure out the sort of invitation we would like, and then getting them made by anyone was going to cost quite a bit.

After spending a month or so playing around with different designs, we decided to print and make the invitations ourselves. It was a very involved and time consuming process of getting the design right on the computer, finding the right paper, then a lot of cutting, folding, gluing and my mate handing writing the names and addresses on every envelope.

We eventually finished them after about three months.

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Once the invitations were done there wasn’t really much else to sort out and we could pretty much take it easy until we packed up the car at the end of 2014 and drive to Tasmania to finalise anything that was outstanding.

We managed to pretty much pay for it all by saving and not getting a loan. We set a budget of $20,000, but it finally all came in under $21,000.