It's a date...

... and a ceremony venue and reception venue too!
Yep, that's right, Da Boy and me have just returned from a very successful wedding planning trip to the beautiful country that is Italy and finally have the date set!
We had an absolutely fantastic week and have found the most amazing places for the big day.
The hotel we're having the reception at is just stunning, a beautiful place set right on the cliff, overlooking the bay of Sorrento.
At the moment we've also booked our second choice of ceremony venue, which is a villa set on the clifftop but we might also get our first choice of a stunning 14th century cloisters, which has been offered to someone else but they haven't yet accepted and we'll get it if they haven't replied in a week.
Although a part of me is leaning more towards the villa at the moment as it is much more private, whereas the cloisters will have tourists wandering in and out and able to watch us get married, which will kind of negate the whole point of getting married abroad in the first place.
Let me explain.
About four months before Da Boy proposed on Christmas Day 2008, he and I were sitting in our favourite Indian restaurant in town waiting for the best curry in Shropshire to find its way to our table when he suddenly and with no prompting began the most unexpected conversation I could have imagined.
You see, neither I or Da Boy had seriously talked about getting married. For me, it was something that would have been nice but not something I was desperate to happen as I would have been just as happy simply being with Da Boy for the rest of my life. I'm from a Catholic family but am not particularly religious myself.
Da Boy himself had never seemed that keen on getting married as it wasn't something he considered important, a trend that tends to run in his family. And that was fine, as I said, I was perfectly happy and had no overwhelming desire to drag my lovely man kicking and screaming down an aisle he never seemed too thrilled with walking down.
So that is why, after six and a half years together, when he brought it up in the middle of a curry house when he wasn't even slightly drunk, I was surprised and a bit shocked, to say the least.
The conversation went something like this:
Da Boy: "You know, it isn't that I don't want to BE married..."
Me: "What?"
Da Boy: "Married. It isn't that I don't want to marry you, it's just the actual thing of GETTING married that I don't want."
Me: "Sorry, come again?"
Da Boy: "It's just, I know it's something you'd like and I do want to be married to you, if I could just bypass the actual act of having to GET married. You know how I hate being the centre of attention and on your wedding day, there's no getting away from it. All the attention is on you."
Me: "Where has this come from?"
Da Boy: "I've just been thinking, that's all. If it were me, I'd just want to disappear and do it with nobody else there but I know that you would hate that and would be devastated if your family wasn't there. I know it means a lot to them that we get married and I know it would mean a lot to you. I just don't want to have to go through all that. If I could just get up tomorrow and BE married, that would be great."
So by this point, as you can tell, I was having a rare moment where I was a bit lost for words. Da Boy isn't one to come out with such things, he's very affectionate and sweet and loving but he is not comfortable talking about emotions and how he feels etc, so this whole conversation was a shock in more ways than one!
After a second or two to collect my thoughts, the conversation continued:
Me: "Well, we could always go and do it abroad, maybe with JUST family and one or two close friends."
Da Boy: "Eh? What? Like, maybe in Italy or something?" (I had taken him to Italy to my grandmother's village a couple of years before and he loved the place.)
Me: "Yeah, maybe. There would be less attention and it is the perfect way to ensure you only have a few people and only those who matter most to you there. I'm not saying I want you to propose right now this second but it's something to think about."
Da Boy: "Like at that place above your grandma's village?"
Me: "The sanctuary place? Yeah, that would be nice."
Da Boy: "That would be awesome! I'd really like that..."
The conversation did go on a bit more but I can't really remember it. And we didn't really talk about it too much more until he dropped the bombshell of an engagement ring on me Christmas morning a few months later.
We moved away from the idea of my grandmother's village and chose Sorrento, simply due to the fact so many weddings were arranged there that there was much less chance of things going wrong.
This is why the cloisters option might ultimately not be the best one for us. Dozens of tourists wandering in and gawping as Da Boy says "I do" could send him running for the hills! But we'll see.
Either way, in June next year I'll finally become Mrs Da Boy.
And all thanks to a random chat in a Shropshire curry house!