Matt & Millie

Our story (according to Amelia)

Our story began in September 2013 when I was buying a drink from the Sports Training Village (STV) café at Bath University. As I stood in line and ordered my drink I realised that I had forgotten my purse. Thankfully the kind young man behind me in the queue — Matthew — came to my rescue and offered to pay for my drink. We got to talking and arranged to meet up a few days later.

We decided to meet by the Abbey Green Tree — a big beautiful tree in a tiny little square in the centre of Bath. I arrived needlessly early as when I looked at my phone to check the time I had received a text from Matthew saying that he was going to be about 10 minutes late. 30 minutes later there was still no sign of him. I googled “how long to wait for a first date”, thinking maybe I had been stood up and was about to leave when he finally arrived! We went for a cup of tea where I must have passed the first test because tea turned into drinks. During drinks however, Matthew asked to borrow my phone to check how long he was able to park in the car park – forgetting what I had previously been googling on my phone I obliviously handed it over… thankfully he saw the funny side!

I continued my streak of embarrassing myself over the following few weeks in various ways including offering to pay for dinner only to realise I had no purse (genuinely!). But the dates kept on continuing and we started to spend more and more time together.

Two years later — after a very dodgy drive up the winding Maranola road in Formia, Italy and after an hours and a half hike up the mountain with no water — at the top of Redentore, looking over the unbelievable views that stretch as far as the Ischia and Capri islands and under a statue of Christ placed there in the year 1900 to commemorate the coming of the new century, Matthew got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.