Our Secret Wedding

24th February 2021

20 years ago today, Lois and I eloped. We ran away to Bath and got married in secret.

We were less star-crossed lovers fleeing a feud between our noble(ish) families, more a cash-short couple in need of a visa for Lois so she could get a job. Lois, newly arrived from Australia, only had temporary work rights, and while I was all for sending her off to do a bit of fruit picking to earn her keep, we concluded that it was best if she got herself a permanent visa and longer-term employment. The solution? Clandestine nuptials.

Why the big secret? I’ll come back to that in a bit — first a bit of back story.

We met in Sydney at the end of 1999, and fell deliriously in love. I only had a one year Australian visa (you’ll find that this is as much a tale of reciprocal work permits as of young romance) so planned my return to London in the summer of 2000. Soon after, Lois announced that she would be joining me. This was not a discussion. There was no conversation about what this meant for us in the long-term, Lois simply informed me that she was coming, and that we would be co-habiting in London. And so, the pattern of our relationship was established.

To the extent that a plan emerged, it was this — I would go home in June 2000, to find a job and a place to for us to live. The Olympics were about to hit Sydney, so it would be crazy for Lois to miss out on that — she’d enjoy that once in a lifetime experience, then join me in the UK in September.

So far, so vaguely sensible. Then Lois changed her mind. The prospect of three whole months apart was too much to bear. What was a mere Olympic experience when up against true love? She rescheduled to turn up at the end of July, just a few weeks after me. We would watch the Olympics together on the telly.

With nowhere to live, I had thrown myself on the generosity of friends (thanks, as ever, David and Bel) so quickly found us a flat in Cricklewood. Pausing briefly to wonder how Lois, after a life growing up with the stunning backdrops of Cape Town and Sydney, would adapt to the more subtle beauty of Cricklewood High Street, I prepared to meet my future.

We did already know that our future was together. We had only been with each other for six months, but had spoken of the places we would go to, of the children we would have. And before we left Sydney, Lois had suggested that we check out a couple of potential wedding venues. “No pressure”, she explained, “but who knows when you’ll be back?” No pressure at all.

Lois had a good first week in London. The sunny week. I took some time off work, she met my siblings for the first time, and we lunched al fresco as my friends queued up to meet the random South African who had inserted herself into all of our lives. We planned to go up to Scotland the following week so she could meet my parents. As the sun shone down on our open top bus tour, this living together in London lark just seemed like one great big holiday.

At the end of that memorable first week, we went out for drinks with a few pals, ending up in the Z Bar in Kilburn (may its memory be a blessing) for late night boozing. As we drunkenly walked and talked our way home, the conversation turned to marriage. You see, explained Lois, she would know exactly when I was going to propose. She had come to understand what sort of person I was, she knew how I liked to plan things. She could read me like a book.

When we got home, I knew exactly what I had to do. I put on some music (Mary’s Prayer by Danny Wilson), I got down on one knee and I asked Lois to marry me. To be clear, I’d had literally no plans on the proposal front ten minutes earlier. Perhaps I did it to prove Lois wrong. Perhaps I did it to secure her commitment before the weather turned nasty. Or perhaps I did it because, drunk at the end of a glorious first week together in London, it suddenly seemed like the best idea in the world.

Lois was surprised at my uncharacteristic spontaneity, but she seemed pleased (and to be fair, she was equally pissed). And so, we agreed to be wed. We told our parents (that’s right, Lois still hadn’t met mine) and started planning a wedding. After a whirlwind romance, we decided to take our time with the big day, which would be 18 months later in Sydney.

That was carefree week 1 in London.

There followed what we shall call “the year of the wobbly”. The weather did indeed turn. I went back to work. As the Olympics began, I watched them in north London alongside the only person in the world who left just before the opening ceremony. It turned out that our shared view from the sofa was not quite the equal of enjoying a month long party in beautiful Sydney (true love notwithstanding). Lois’ Australian friends kept phoning her to share the excitement and “make her feel a part of it”. Eventually I had to tell them that this was not helping and they should stop calling. As she cried in the next room.

There were incidents.

The time she threw back her engagement ring, ran down the street and hid in a bush in a neighbour’s garden.

The time she pulled an (admittedly very rude and aggressive) driver’s wipers off their windscreen and, when I tried to calm things down, declared to the world that rude driver and I deserved each other.

And there was burger-gate, a story in itself involving drag club tantrums, fury over missing out on the best burger in Brighton, and running off into the dark streets of Hove.

It was a tough first year for Lois, far away from everyone and everything familiar, shacked up with a Scottish guy that she didn’t actually know very well, and contemplating a lifetime of experiencing his annoying habits revealing themselves one by one.

Eventually, though, things calmed down as Lois got to grips with her new life in London, which brings us to the moment of our marital subterfuge. The big wedding was already planned for the end of the year, with family and friends showing us the most enormous gesture of love and friendship by planning trips to the other side of the world to join us for our celebrations. We decided that greeting them on their arrival in Australia with the news that we were already married wasn’t the best plan.

So off we went to Bath, on 24th February 2001, to secretly wed in a registry office. We told ourselves that this wasn’t really a wedding, it was strictly for administrative purposes. But as we were going, we figured we might as well make a night of it. Our friends Tony and Karen joined us as witnesses, we had a little party for four, and vowed that we would never speak of it again.

However…

The story came out eventually. Obviously. It was many years later, just after our third child Avi was born, with Lois’ parents over from Australia and the incredibly rare occasion of both families gathered for Friday night dinner. My brother Tim (who we had previously told about the secret wedding) chose that perfect moment to out us. There followed a scene from a sitcom — a long stunned silence. We laughed nervously. The silence continued. A whimper and some tears. Then some shouting. And, eventually, laughter.

And now it’s another story that we tell our kids, a tale from when we were young.

Here’s to 20 brilliant years being not so secretly married to the most remarkable, feisty, smart, generous, burger-loving dynamo who left her beautiful Sydney lifestyle to throw in her lot with a Glasgow boy she barely knew. Well, she knows me now.

And I haven’t even told you how we met. I’ll save that for our other 20th anniversary.