Young Couples Talk About the Moment They Knew They Were Meant to Be Together Forever

Love is a wonderful thing. Sharing it with someone means you can ask that person to do weird stuff for you that you can't really ask anyone else to do, like look deep into your nose, or split the rent on a studio apartment that should legally only house one small adult, or spend the rest of your lives together, until you both start to lose control of your bodily functions, without that mattering to either of you even one tiny bit.

As today is the designated day to celebrate love, photographer Chris Bethell met with six young couples who recently got engaged or married, to talk about all that.

Natasha Wynarczyk, 28 & Peter Ellender, 32

VICE: How long have you guys been together?
Peter: Basically seven years.
Natasha: Yeah, basically seven years this month.

Maybe you didn't have a definitive start point.
Peter: Vodka does that to you.

Are you engaged now or married?
Peter: Engaged.

How far into the relationship was it that you started to talk about marriage?
Natasha: We probably started talking about it about three years in. But not seriously – that came more at about four years.
Peter: We talked about it in the kind of way where you go to a friend's wedding and you say, "Oh, we wouldn't have done that bit like that." There was one wedding where Tash caught the bouquet and my reaction was not ideal. I remember head-butting a table.
Natasha: The Saturday before he proposed we were all at our friend Zing's party and basically with all of our friends that knew. Every time Pete saw me talking to a really drunk person he would come and position himself near them just in case something slipped out.
Peter: I genuinely don't remember that.
Natasha: All I really remember about the proposal is you going, "Do you know what day it is?" and I knew it was [the anniversary of] the day we first kissed each other.

What was your immediate reaction?
Natasha: I was really happy, but of course thought he was joking. I always thought I'd cry because I get soppy over shit rom-coms.
Peter: It offends me that you would cry at The Holiday, and when I propose you just grin.
Natasha: My mum was in Iran at the time, visiting family. Pete had called her to let her know before then, so that was good, but I couldn't get hold of her for about a week to tell her I said yes. We just came back here after and finished a bottle of Prosecco.

How long have you guys been together?
Sadhbh: Three-and-a-half years. We've been engaged since September, so half a year engaged.

Who proposed to who?
Sadhbh: I did.
Ida: We got engaged in August.
Sadhbh: We did.
Ida: You said September.
Sadhbh: Fuck! No, it's because I always associate it with our anniversary, which is in September.

So what was the moment, if there was one, you knew you wanted to propose?
Sadhbh: I mean, the gross answer is probably like six months in, when we knew that we loved each other. And the other answer is there's a stereotype among gay and queer women that you'll just shack up after three months and stay together forever. We both fought that, but also we knew that was going to happen, so we joked about who was going to propose first.
Ida: I was threatening to do it as well. I was thinking about it for a little bit.

How did it happen?
Sadhbh: It's really gross. We were in Denmark visiting Ida's parents, and I'd bought the ring. Do you know Claddagh rings? They're an Irish ring that symbolises friendship and loyalty. We went for a walk on the beach, and I waited until we were far enough away from the few people who were down by the beach, because Ida never wanted a scene – she was completely against that sort of thing.
Ida: I just don't like people.
Sadhbh: I said to Ida that I'd brought her something from London, so told her to put her hands out and close her eyes. I started to shake uncontrollably and turned over Ida's left hand – very presumptuously – and began to put the ring on her finger. She opened her eyes and was like "Noooo!" As in a shocked no, not no-no.
Ida: Don't forget that there was a sunset. On the beach, with a sunset.
Sadhbh: One thing is that, before I came out, marriage didn't seem like that big of a deal. But now because it's still so exciting that we can even do it, it's suddenly so much more important that I'll be able to say that Ida is my wife. It's novel in the world. It's not novel in our experience, but it is in the world. I think gay and queer marriage has that extra enjoyment, which is fair because we didn't have it for so long.

How long have you guys been together for?
Dan: Coming up to five years now.
Ashleigh: We've been engaged for just a bit over a year now.

Who proposed?
Dan: I proposed.

At what point did you begin to realise that marriage was on the cards?
Dan: It was probably about six months before proposing. I mean, we'd talked about it and ironically we had talked about having kids before I'd decided that I was going to ask her to marry me.
Ashleigh: I'd always been quite anti-marriage. I'd always said to Dan if he proposed I wasn't going to say yes.
Dan: This made me think I'd have to do something quite special. But yeah, we were talking about having kids. I'd always said that I needed to have kids in a family. I didn't care whether marriage or kids came first – either way, I wanted both to happen at some point down the line.

Ashleigh, how come you were against marriage?
Ashleigh: I think fundamentally it's because I've grown up around a lot of broken homes and broken families. My parents were never really together – they both remarried and both divorced again. If I love you, I'll stay with you forever, and if I don't love you, a ring isn't going to change that.

Did the engagement change anything in your relationship?
Dan: We were actually pregnant before we got engaged, coming up to three months. It turned out to be the best start to the year imaginable, but last year was an absolute shocker for us. When we got back and they did the scan, we found out that our baby wasn't very well.
Ashleigh: Our baby had Patau's Syndrome, which is trisomy 13, the most extreme trisomy – it's not compatible with life.
Dan: So we had that news to deal with when we got back, and then for the weeks and months that followed that was about us losing the baby.
Ashleigh: I have a necklace with some of her ashes in. Literally, it went from us having this euphoric feeling…
Dan: …it felt like nothing could go wrong.
Ashleigh: So when you say did it change our relationship, maybe it did? Maybe that moment of pure bliss and connection and love was very much needed in order to cope with what was coming. Not to say that we wouldn't have got through it if we weren't engaged, but there's something really strange about having so much euphoria followed by so much despair. It probably took us up until falling pregnant with this little one seven months later that we really came to terms with the loss of our first baby. But those months – as someone who was anti-marriage – were a true testament as to why I love this man. It was the hardest thing I've ever been through as a woman, and as a couple it put a massive strain on us. But we fucking did it. We overcame it, we cried and we went through all of the throes of what it is to be a grieving parent.
Dan: It made us realise how much we wanted a child, though. That's one of the most important things to us, to complete our unit.

How long have you guys been together?
Zahra: Almost three years. Engaged for a year and four months.
Tom: We got engaged after being together a year-and-a-half.

Who proposed to who?
Tom: I proposed to her.

How did you do it?
Tom: This is going to sound so bougie. We booked a holiday to the south of France, to somewhere we'd been before. There was this beautiful beach that you have to climb over rocks to access, but then you have your own private beach. I was like, 'Okay, I'm gonna do this there and it'll be great.' So we woke up and drove to this beach. I found out a few months later that I got a speeding ticket on the way. It's the only speeding ticket I've ever had abroad, but I felt it was justified when I saw it. I also decided to buy loads of inflatable toys at the shop on the way to the beach. I don't know what I was preparing for.
Zahra: He bought himself a John Cena bodyboard – the WWF wrestler.
Tom: And a blow-up boat. Anyway, we got there and the tide was really high, so it was extremely difficult to get onto the rocks to get to this beach. I was carrying all of these items, and as I was walking I slipped and cut open my foot really deep. I was bleeding loads.
Zahra: He was screaming to himself: "Come on! Come on! We can do this!" He'd stormed ahead, but I started seeing the blood on the stones. He got to this one point where it kind of levelled out, and then he just shouted: "No! It's not pretty enough for her!"
Tom: I was in fucking war mode. I was bleeding, I had a ring in my pocket, a boat on my shoulder. John Cena staring at me on the right. Then I basically walked around the corner, sat on a rock, feeling really faint, and was like, "Oh… will you marry me?"
Zahra: He didn't even kneel down.
Tom: I was bleeding loads! Then she just asked me if I was joking over and over, and then she said yes. We then just called all of our family.

Did it change anything in your relationship?
Zahra: Yeah, it's more secure. It's nice. You don't feel like any big fight you have will lead to a break-up. You just get on with it.
Tom: I wouldn't say you're more insecure before being engaged. But you no longer think about other people affecting your relationship. I don't know – maybe that sounds really archaic.
Zahra: There's a reason why you've said yes and there's a reason why you've asked.

How long have you been together?
Ismail: Married seven months. I'd say the bit before that – about a month, two months, five months… It's complicated, I don't know.
Iman: Six months in January, but who's keeping count?

Okay, so walk me through the beginnings of your relationship. How did it lead up to marriage?
Iman: We met at university as a group of friends, and he was a mutual friend. There was a trip to Palestine that he'd already gone on. I really wanted to go Palestine at the time, and there was another trip, so I went on that and he was already there as leader of the group. People [on the trip] were passionate about the cause and wanted to help others. That was something I was looking for as well, and those are the kind of people I keep close to me – people who are interested in human rights causes and things like that. So we had that in common, and we shared it in a way we wouldn't have thought we could share it. It was literally there on the grounds of Palestine – it was a great bonding experience.

So you knew quite quickly into the trip that you wanted to spend the rest of your lives together?
Iman: Well, he did!

Did you propose when you were there?
Ismail: We had a discussion, while we were there.

How long was the trip?
Iman: Twelve weeks. When you know, you know!
Ismail: I think this is where the cultural and religious differences come into play. Because within the Islamic culture, marriage isn't supposed to be seen as this huge, long distant, have to be together for five or six years before you can even think about it kind of thing. And there's a lot of emphasis around the concept of families getting together and having those kinds of discussions, so I think on both of our sides we knew that just out of sheer respect for the people who brought us up it would be wrong to even contemplate going forward without having had conversations with them first. So after that, the very next discussion was "we should probably be speaking to our parents very soon" – myself with my parents, her with her parents, because we're from two completely different cultures, not just in a sense that she was raised in Canada and I was raised in this country; you've also got a bunch of mixed up-ness
Iman: Yeah, I was born to Tunisian parents. I actually didn't know where he was from – it was always something very ambiguous.
Ismail: It still is very ambiguous – it's an unknown ethnicity called Bravanese, an ethnic group that moved to Somalia and then Kenya and now everywhere. Now they live in Tottenham, over there, and its got its own language and so on. Anyway, after we had that discussion we both agreed to speak to our parents.

Did you find marriage changed your relationship at all?
Ismail: I think you learn a lot about living with another human being, especially because they were raised in a completely different way to you, and what that means is you have different values. Not necessarily worse values in any way, but different values and different things that you may have prioritised before, and you didn't understand why the other person didn't get that, and vice versa. That took a lot of learning and adjusting to, to really understand that she thinks the way she thinks because she was raised in this way, and I think the way I think because I was raised in a different way, and it's kind of a mutual grounding to that
Iman: And the expectations, like, "Why didn't he do that?" Or, "Why should I do that?" But you should do that! It was the whole expectations versus reality and cultures.

How long have you guys been together?
Sam: Five years exactly, pretty much.

And how long have you been engaged?
Sam: The last six months?
Justine: No, longer! Since July of last year, 2016. So actually, yeah, six months.

And who proposed to who?
Sam: I proposed.

When did you realised you wanted to propose? Was there a specific moment?
Sam: There wasn't necessarily a moment that I felt it needed to be done, but I felt I was at a point where I wanted that to happen. At a point where I was happy and I felt that she was happy and – I don't know… if it can continue like this, then it'll be brilliant, really.

Talk me through the day – what happened?
Sam: We've always had this ongoing joke that we don't really have any photos of the two of us, because we both pull pretty funny faces. So either she hates the photo or I hate the photo, so I bought a Polaroid camera and said, "Right, we're going to have a day where we go around London and just take photos of the two of us in nice places, so we have a load of photos of us."
Justine: And we struggle with London sometimes – we're both from Devon. But it was sunny and it was like a tourist day, trying it out for the day.
Sam: Yeah, it was good to feel like a tourist, enjoy London and see some landmarks, despite the fact that we've been living here ages. Anyway, the plan was to get loads of photos of us together, so cover the original mission, but then on the last one I told the guy – this random guy – that I was going to propose, so can you wait until I'm on one knee – and yeah!
Justine: It was terrifying! It was at the Pagoda, Hampstead Heath. There was a Stanley Kubrick exhibition on in there.

What was your reaction?
Justine: I cried. It was the one point where, because he doesn't like talking to strangers, but then he did it himself – which was odd – and then when you were running back I thought I could see something in your hand, but I didn't think anything of it then. Even that morning, because it was a Sunday and I just didn't want to wash that day, but he convinced me to wash my hair – "You'll feel so much better about the day if you do." I am very pleased I washed my hair. It was a sweaty, emotional experience.
Sam: It was such a hot day as well!
Justine: It was so hot. It makes me all nervous talking about it now!

What did you do in the moments after?
Justine: The guy who took the photo – his girlfriend burst into tears, and he was saying it was really great. He took another photo and then walked off, so we had a little moment, and then he came back, like, "So, you know I'm a photographer? Well, I could photograph your wedding."
Sam: Yeah, it was a bit weird, wasn't it? We were just caught in this moment and were like, "OK!" So I was mid-embrace and he was asking if I wanted to take his number.

Are you thinking about having him?
Together: No!

Thanks, both.

@CBethell_photo