Celebrating a 10 year wedding anniversary

As its our 10 year wedding anniversary tomorrow, and I’ll be honest I am struggling with motivation for things to write about at the moment I thought it might be nice to mark the occasion with a blog post!

For those who don’t know, Dave and I have been together for almost 20 years and known each other since I was 10, since he’s one of my brothers best friends. He was always the lad with floppy blonde curtains (which to me were very Nick Carter, to him were more Kurt Cobain) who stood at the top of drive waiting for my brother to walk to school. Cut to 2004 where all the boys were home from Christmas from uni and my brother invited me to the pub with them on xmas eve. The rest, as they say is history.

We got married at Langley Castle in Northumberland on 30^th March 2013, which was quickly followed by an amazing month long honeymoon in Australia, New Zealand and Dubai. As it turned out, that set a precedent for the next ten years, because, obviously COVID aside, we’ve been all about the travel since we got married. We’ve been lucky enough to save up to go to some amazing places like Iceland, Norway, Thailand, Canada and New York in the last ten years and are already thinking of where our next adventure will be.

Many of you will know that Dave has dipped his toe into the ultra running world and completed many competitions which I’ve been support crew for. As fraught as they may have been from time to time, it was always a pleasure being able to help out while he was doing something so amazing, even if it was just being on hand to re plaster his blistered feet or keep him topped up in Jelly Babies.

In return he’s done nothing but support me through all my blogging ventures, coming with me to take pictures or helping me put together guides or tours at our own expense. I mean, not that he ever took much persuading to visit the new micro-pub that opened up recently but I appreciate it all the same. I’ve also been through two job changes since we got married, which can always be a stressful experience. He’s always been my biggest cheerleader in terms of encouraging me to be better or push myself out of my comfort zone.

Obviously it’s not always sunshine and butterflies, we’ve been through testing times too, mainly because of me it has to be said though and I mean that extremely self deprecatingly. I went through what I called my ‘wobble’ in 2015 when I was diagnosed with depression and went through some CBT to try and get through it. That wasn’t an amazingly happy time, and more recently in the lead up to the hysterectomy I had in January, I can’t have been the easiest person to live with. But still, in sickness and in health right?

COVID was also challenging, as I’m sure it was for most people, as we had to navigate working from home together and the uncertainty of what was going on in the crazy world around us. I can totally appreciate how testing that time might have been for couples suddenly forced to spend every waking moment together but I think all in all we came through it pretty unscathed and I would say if anything it’s brought us closer together.

We often like to celebrate our wedding anniversary any way because, well why not and since it’s a biggy this year we’re booked into Michelin Star restaurant House of Tides in Newcastle, which I’m really looking forward to!

So safe to say that if that’s the first 10 years I’m really looking forward to the next 10. Incidentally the gift for the 10 year wedding anniversary is tin or aluminum because they’re known resilience and inability to rust – aww. 20 years though is China. And I’ve never been to Chin before…