How We Met
It was the summer of 2014, we were both going through pretty hard times in our lives. I (Bronte) had just been through a breakup and Thomas was going through some things in the army.
We had coincidentally both booked to go on a cruise around the South Pacific islands on board Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas. I (Bronte) was travelling with my parents, brother and his girlfriend at the time.
Thomas was with his brothers and some friends.
The cruise has just set sail when I first noticed Thomas at the bar with his brother. I remember thinking how handsome and sexy he was. I was never a fan of tattoos and Thomas had two full arm sleeves of tattoos. I turned to my mum and said “look how handsome that guy is, what a shame he has tattoos though”.
After that I didn’t think too much of it and continued on with my afternoon.
Later that night I was in the nightclub with my brother having a few drinks when I had a tap on my shoulder.
I turned around and the tattooed man from earlier was standing there.
He held out his hand and asked me to dance with him.
I said yes, and we went to the dance floor.
It was pretty noisy and we couldn’t talk properly, so we went outside to the deck and got to know each other even more.
I told him that I had just been accepted into university to study a Bachelor of Nursing and he was in the Australian Army.
Here, under the stars we shared our first kiss.
From that moment for the remaining 10 days of the cruise we were inseparable. We acted like a couple and did everything together.
At the end of the cruise I went back to my home in Sydney and Thomas had to fly back to his in Darwin. This left us 3,972km apart.
It was a short 5days later that he booked plane tickets back to Sydney to be with me. It was then that he asked me to be his girlfriend.
For the next year we did long distance between Sydney and Darwin, taking turns flying back and fourth to see each other.
After that year was up we both knew something had to give as we didn’t want to continue on like this!
Thomas put his discharge into the Australian Army and moved the 3,972km to be with me in Sydney. It’s here that we rented out first home together and finally felt like a “real couple”.
Although he moved to Sydney, he had gotten a new job doing security contracting overseas. Which meant that he would be away for two months at a time, then home for two months. So we are now a FIFO couple.
Even thought we have a house together, a Toy Cavoodle puppy called Charlie, ultimately the last 5 years of our relationship has still been long distance.
How They Asked
We decided to go to Fiji for a week over my birthday in 2019. In the 5 years we had been dating we had never shared a single birthday with each other. It just so happened that this year Thomas would be home for mine!
On the second afternoon of our holiday at our hotel the Intercontinental Fiji, Thomas took my hand at sunset and asked me to walk up on a little grass hill overlooking the entire beach to watch the sunset.
Little did I know that whilst I was looking out at the beach and the Sun he had gotten down on one knee behind me.
As I turned around I saw the ultimate love of my life on his knee with a box containing the most extraordinary engagement ring I’ve ever seen.
It was in this moment he asked me to marry him, I said YES!
It was the most amazing moment in time, standing in paradise with the love of my life, absolutely head over heals in love and newly engaged.
