To Have & To Hold - Part 2

With the permission of the bride, here a few more impressions...... And as this post is for Vanessa ♥ Richard, this is one is in English.

I seem to have an awful lot of photographs of Vanessa - but I am sure, Richard you will agree with me, she is the prettier one... :)

Vanessa and I met working in an office in Monaco - I was working on this yacht (so was Richard) with a shore based office. When the company grew, Vanessa came along...

'I employed her' - the Captain said to me - 'because I thought you two would get on well' - if only hew knew.....

Days in the office were often a bit dull - the only excitement used to be the UPS man 'visiting' - so we had to find our own entertainment...

Food always seems a good idea when one is a little bored...We'd have porridge with sugar and cinnamon in the mornings, sneaked out café crème, lunch breaks would gradually get longer and naughtier - sometimes after a shared demi carafe de vin rouge, we needed a litlle snooze underneath our desks, Vanessa always served afternoon tea on a tray with those yummy Belgium waffles from Carrefour - oh yes, Carrefour - we'd wonder around Carrefour for ages, pretending to buy our lunch.

Stacks of glossy magazines always provided a lot of entertainment too - we went through a phase were we cut out those huge diamond rings from ads and stuck them to our fingers with Pritt Stick, giggling ourselves silly. (And I remember Vanessa coming on board one night after work and she had forgotten to take hers off...:))

As the weather got better and better, we got naughtier and braver....we often 'moved' the office (thanks to the invention of the mobile phone) to the Monaco pool in the port... we were 'caught' by the Captain once - but he was just as bad and just thought it was amusing....

Anyway, even then - and this has NEVER been discussed between Vanessa and me - I just KNOW :) - Vanessa and Richard were getting on rather well. I am convinced that they had a little têteà-tête that summer...everytime Vanessa turned up to work carrying her little pink 'swimming bag' (overnight bag more like), at the end of the day she was out of the office like a shot...

It did however take a few more years.

Eventually a move for Vanessa from the South of France to Mallorca, a lovely little son arrived, some more time (.....) went by, and then - FINALLY - the Jimmy Choos came out of the shoebox and Vanessa & Richard said "YES".

I wish you ALL the very best for your life together! It was lovely to be part of your special day on Saturday!!!

With lots of love

Nicola xxx