Introduction

There will be many of you who don't know one of us, and even more of you who don't know how our relationship came to be. So, we've written a bit about those three things here for you.

Rebecca Gray

I've skipped around a bit in my life: I was born in Cheshire on 21st January 1984, moved to near Oxford shortly afterwards where I lived until I was 12 when the sticks were upped again and I ended up in Kendal, Cumbria (famous mainly for its mint cake). After finishing school, I departed back down south to start university at St John's College, Oxford, studying Maths. I've spent the time since finishing my degree temping and currently I'm working for the Oxford Diocese, which means my knowledge of the names of obscure hamlets in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire has expanded considerably. That's filling in the time until September when, all things being equal, I start life as a graduate library trainee in Oxford. I enjoy watching the mighty Crystal Palace Football Club, collecting 20th century children's literature (I find this sounds rather more respectable than "I have 92 Biggles books"), reading (particularly the aforementioned 20th century children's literature), writing fanfic (based on the 20th century children's literature. Anyone see a trend here?), baking and decorating cakes, making model aircraft, and using semi-colons and other exciting forms of punctuation.

Benjamin Alexander

I am a truly British person - I was born in Coventry, March 8th 1984, with a mother from Cardiff and a father from Glasgow! At age 7 I moved to South Wales, and after school attended Wadham College, Oxford, to study Mathematics & Computer Science. Since then I worked for 4 months in Boswells, a department store in Oxford, and am currently doing administrative work at Oxford Magistrate's Court. This is quite fun, getting to summon to people to Court and the such. All the while I'm pretty busy making many wedding preparations and this website.

My hobbies include watching Coventry City Football Club, watching football in general, the internet, programming, planning weddings & buying food that is on special offer.

The story so far...

Although we both studied almost the same subject, at the same university, in the same year, and went to the same church, there was only one occasion in the first year when we met. I had made friends with Rebecca's elder sister Rachel and some of her friends, and once after church Rachel introduced me to Rebecca, sometime in late 2002. I can even remember our complete conversation... I said "hi" and then she said "hi" - but Rebecca can't recall this happening! As you can tell it was a very romantic moment...

After this inauspicious start, we met again in Easter 2004, again thanks to Rachel, who needed some people to help her move room. A pleasant time was had by all, but it wasn't until sometime in the couple of months after that that we properly "met." It was after a Bible study at church, and a group of us went to the pub to socialise afterwards. As we went into the pub, we somehow lost sight of everyone else, so we just sat down on a table of our own and just chatted for an hour. We discovered we had lots in common - football, our sense of humour, and a slight awkwardness in talking to relative strangers!

Second year exams came, and went, and Autumn 2004 heralded a new Sunday routine - due to the fact I had a big room, I invited people back to my room for fun & fellowship. Rebecca, Rachel & Rob (then Rachel's boyfriend, now Rachel's fiancé) came almost every week, and we got to know each other rather well. Well, Rebecca & Rachel already knew each other rather well, but everyone else got to know everyone else rather well :-)

At the start of 2005, I started to think to myself, hey, Becca's a fun girl, we always have good times, she seems to quite like me... and I realised that, yes, I could see myself spending my life with her. Some of you might think I was thinking too far ahead, but as Christians we both believe that the point of having a boy/girlfriend is as a precursor to marriage, and if you can't see yourself marrying them then there's no point having a girl/boyfriend, it's a waste of time and messes up emotions.

Nevertheless, one step at a time, so I prayed about it, thought about it and spent more time with her. Towards the end of term (mid-March) I tried about 3 or 4 times to ask her if she would like to be my girlfriend - but failed to get the words out in the time, so in the end I gave up and gave her a note on the last day of term, March 10th. Then the next day she sent me an email accepting my kind offer. We were so excited at the start of this new relationship, that we spent a grand total of 3 minutes' time in each other's company for the next 10 days. (Well, we were off at different student conferences most of that time...)

So that's how we got together. Since then we've had many ups and very few "downs" - it's been a fantastic 12 months (at time of writing). It became obvious to us during the summer that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, since we were so perfectly matched for each other. So, on December 14th 2005, Rebecca met me outside of work. I gave her a Christmas card, which she opened to find "Merry Christmas fiancée" on the front of the card. By the time she'd looked up from the card, I was down on one knee holding the ring up to her, saying "marry me" - and she accepted after approximately 0.23 seconds of hesitation. I'd picked the ring myself and she liked it, so she kept it (after getting it resized twice!)

All of which, brings us to this August 12th. We're looking forward to it, hope you are too!