The Mr X factor 25: In which Dave & Wendy become engaged!! July – November 2010


Engaged! – How it unfolded – Rest of summer: Warsaw Poland for Rob & Marta’s wedding – visiting Wendy’s parents in Cornwall - from unemployed to employed – Job@The London Clinic – other summer events – weekend in Majorca - Engagement party – unbirthday-like-birthday – W&D’s first anniversary - weekend in Marbella with Wendy’s folks


Hi again everyone – here’s the summary of the last five months – July thru November!

First things first: Getting engaged! This happened in London, at Southbank (the southside of the River Thames – near Waterloo), late in the evening on 29 September - which also happened to be Wendy’s birthday! We had been out for dinner and a show (I can’t recall much about the show!) and were on our way home. However we took a detour first, to be Thames-side. It had been raining throughout the evening, so Southbank was largely empty of people and the lights of the promenade and the iconic London cityscape in the distance lit the scene up nicely and made the scene quite romantic!! You can see all this from the photo we took, which we were both delighted with – an unforgettable moment for us! The detour had made Wendy pretty much suspect what was going on, and my fast-paced walking along the promenade didn’t exactly help – I realised you don’t know how you are going to react until the moment approaches! We found a nice quiet spot beside the Thames, and I gave Wendy her birthday card, then got down on one knee, produced a ring and popped the question – to which she said ‘Yes’. Result! (accompanied by somersaults!!).


So that is how it unfolded – all very exciting! Immediately afterwards and the next morning we made some excited calls to family back home in NZ. Thankfully it was only a couple of days until the weekend arrived because things went nuts pretty quickly in terms of phone calls, texts, emails to/from people, and being pretty buzzed out on adrenalin and excitement for a few days.


The lead up to getting engaged had been unfolding over summer. We had discussed beforehand ourselves. What Wendy did not know is that I had been on a top-secret father-&-son engagement ring scoping mission, at Hatton Gardens - London’s main street for jewellery shopping - in early July (learnt a lot about rings that day!). Then about a month later Wendy’s parents arrived in the UK. They stayed with us for a few days, during which I managed to declare my intentions to Wendy’s father and ask his permission to propose to Wendy!


I was very keen to get a job before proposing to Wendy, so when that came through in late August (see below) it was off to Hatton Gardens one Saturday to have a look at rings ourselves. A fortnight later we made a secretive trip to the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham (under the guise of a visit to watch an Aston Villa football match!), where we visited several jewellers, eventually choosing a lovely engagement ring that Wendy had seen at the first shop we went into! And so, soon after we got engaged!!


The whole lead-up to getting engaged has been really enjoyable - memorable and special conversations, scoping missions, surprises and trips – all adding to the chivalry, romance and excitement of it all. The last year has also been a lovely time too, and now we are very much looking forward to getting married and building a life together. Thank you all for such encouraging and warm congratulations and best wishes. We have really appreciated them.


Since then William and Kate have taken our lead and seized the limelight from us! Nonetheless, we’ve started to get some wedding planning together, which has been an interesting adventure in itself! A case of working out the big things organised first – place, church, reception venue, date, catering, and then starting on the rest, which will no doubt expand in size and complexity as time goes on – I have been warned by several people!! Still, have been hoping to have this sort of ‘problem’ for a fair while so I am not complaining!

Aside from all that there has actually been other stuff going on over summer!! In mid-July we headed to Warsaw in Poland, to witness my kiwi mate Rob Edgecombe marry his Polish fiancée, Marta. This was a lovely weekend away and a very special occasion too. It was our first time in Poland, and all of Rob’s family as well as several mutual friends had also made it over from New Zealand. Great to catch up with the growing Edgecombe clan and several Wellington mates also!

Poland in summer-time is sunny, swelteringly hot and humid. However the cavernous and beautiful cathedral that Rob and Marta got married in was refreshingly cool. It was also very popular – with lots of weddings scheduled there for every Saturday over summer.

Rob and Marta had a 45-minute slot in a virtual conveyor belt of nuptials – we all headed inside after the just-married couple and wedding party emerged, and when Rob and Marta had been married we all headed outside to see the next group waiting to head in after us – Classic!! Quite a different and enjoyable experience to any other weddings I had been to previously.

After this we went by bus to the reception – Polish tradition makes it an all-night affair celebration of feasting, drinking, speeches and dancing, again quite the cultural experience. We all got back to our hotel around 5am – I haven’t stayed up that late for a few years now! On the Sunday it rained and the temperature dropped thankfully. In the afternoon we went to a lovely BBQ at Marta’s parents house, which was a really enjoyable time also.

After that people slowly went their separate ways. Wendy and I had a brief look around Warsaw on the Monday, which was very interesting and enjoyable. We took a leisurely stroll along Krakowskie Przedmiescie (main street towards the Old Town), past Castle Square, checking out the beautifully reconstructed Old Town, as well as the New Town briefly.

We glimpsed the Vistula River, before making our way back to the airport to fly back to London. As usual, not enough time to explore - we would like to go back if possible sometime!

Apart from all the above, I have also enjoyed watching Spain win the football World Cup, been to various summer BBQs and parties in our neighbourhood, continued my theology study (a welcome distraction from job hunting), catching a couple of shows (Wicked and Avenue Q).

It had been a pleasant summer, apart from the fact that I had been jobless since the end of March. It turned out to be almost five months by the time I got a job at the end of August. There’s no doubt about it, unemployment can be tough. A lot of public sector project managers have been let go here, so I was one of thousands looking for work. After one interview in four months, I managed to get three in one week in early August! I did really well in the two interviews on the Friday, but had been turned down for one by the end of that day, and found out the following week that I had missed out on the other one too – all incredibly frustrating. However two weeks later I was offered the job I really wanted, so it was great to be off to work again!

My job is at the prestigious ‘London Clinic’ a private hospital on Harley St http://www.thelondonclinic.co.uk/ - near the lovely Regent’s Park and only half an hour’s travel from home. Wendy is very jealous I can window-shop down Marylebone High Street during my lunch hours! I will be working there through to the end of February at present.

The traditional end of summer in the UK is the August Bank Holiday long weekend, for which Wendy and I took the train down to Liskeard in Cornwall.

We enjoyed a relaxing three days catching up with Wendy’s parents, including a cycle trip from Wadebridge to the coast at Padstow - a very nice fishing village (though nothing on Honfleur!) which we enjoyed looking around.

We also drove around West Cornwall in Garry & Lyn’s motor home – good seeing a part of the UK I had not visited before.

We also went go-karting, donkey-hugging and rabbit-shooting (I should say, attempted rabbit shooting!) explored Bodmin Moor briefly.

In fact our final act of a nice weekend was to do some cliff-jumping into the abandoned tin mines that had been filled with water. We then jumped(!) back on the train to London on a sunny Monday afternoon.

Wendy and I also attended Holy Trinity Brompton’s ‘Marriage preparation course’ in September/October – held on five consecutive Thursdays nights at a church in South Kensington: http://relationshipcentral.org/marriage-preparation-course/about-course. It was like a date night out for us, and gave us lots to discuss and think about, on the topics of communication, commitment, resolving conflict, keeping love alive, and shared goals and values.

We had a weekend on the Spanish island of Majorca in mid-October, which helped us blob out after the initial engagement excitement and burst of wedding planning.

Mild, though not overly warm, we still managed to get to the beach and have a swim, as well as cycling around Porto Colom, where we stayed.

We had our engagement party on 30 October, at a bar on Marylebone High Street - a special and enjoyable night out – we managed to see a lot of friends that we hadn’t seen for a while! With all the engagement/wedding prep madness I had the most ‘unbirthday-like’ birthday I have ever had on 5 November, heading for dinner and a movie with Wendy to celebrate my 35th birthday. We celebrated our one year ‘going out’ anniversary on Nov 8 (time flies!!), with a meal out at a favourite restaurant.

Just this weekend we headed to Marbella in Southern Spain, for a long weekend with Wendy’s parents, who have been motor-homing around Europe since September. We flew into Malaga and stayed with them at their camping ground east of Marbella. It was the first time we had seen them since becoming engaged, so it was a pretty special time.

After a delicious ‘Vowles-style’ fry-up for brunch on the Friday, we enjoyed a relaxing walk along the beach and port in the warm and sunny weather.

On Saturday we checked out Marbella, where Wendy (worryingly) got carried away with a pirate. Later we headed out for a very enjoyable meal in the evening, aided in no small part by some humorous banter with our excellent waiter (I didn’t ask if his name was Manuel!!).

I was keen to see where Wendy gets her competitive instincts from, so we had a couple of games of the NZ-made ‘Stonewall’ board game over the weekend, the second of which proved particularly competitive, after some debate over the interpretation of the rules! Wendy’s Mum won, then Wendy did, so it was not good for the lads – clearly a game of luck!! Anyway, there will be a re-match soon!

On Sunday morning we said goodbye to Wendy’s folks until Christmas, and flew home – the next time we fly out of London will probably be when we fly home to get married in March next year. Wow!!

All for now… hope this finds you well, and season’s greetings.

Dave (& Wendy)