LONG STORY, HERE’S THE SHORT
VERSION.

There are easier ways to love someone than growing up alongside them.

Ben and Qi have, for reasons known only to themselves, chosen the less efficient route.

They have seen each other through different jobs, different homes, grief, depression, questionable financial decisions, very good meals, very bad moods, and enough arguments to know that “never go to bed angry” is advice written by people who clearly enjoy being exhausted.

There were months when life felt light, and others when simply getting through the day together felt like an achievement. They learnt that loving someone is not always about knowing exactly what to say. Sometimes it is giving them space. Sometimes it is sharing a pack of snacks. Sometimes it is sitting beside them to share a moment together.

And sometimes it is both of them silently saving the best bit for the other person.
The last piece of a snack. The nicer portion. The final bit of skincare they think the other should have.

Neither says anything.
Neither touches it.

Eventually one of them notices the abandoned last piece sitting there and says,
“Oh. We did it again.”

They do this often enough for it to be mildly ridiculous.

Somewhere in all of that, they built a life.

Not in one grand moment, but slowly - through routines, inside jokes, late-night conversations, small kindnesses, and the ordinary habit of coming home to each other.

It was not particularly cinematic.

It was better than that.

It was theirs.

Qi had noticed something about Ben quite early on. For all the armour, there was an enormous softness underneath it. It appeared in pockets - in the way he would stop to help an old stranger, strike up a ridiculous conversation with someone he had never met, or quietly do something kind and behave afterwards as though nobody had noticed.

She noticed.

As life became heavier, those glimpses became rarer. But she remembered the person beneath it, even when he sometimes struggled to.

Then a tiny Holland Lop called Juju arrived and made Ben’s carefully guarded heart considerably less convincing. Jojo followed. Then Lulu - a Cavapoo with absolutely no respect for personal space, sleeping arrangements, or the idea that Ben and Qi might be the protagonists of their own household.

And slowly, almost without announcement, their world got bigger.

It would be nice to say they brought out only the best in each other.

They did not.

They have brought out the best, the worst, the unreasonable, the frightened, the stubborn, the very tired - and, every so often, the person who absolutely should have stopped talking three sentences ago.

But they have also had the privilege of watching each other change.

Not by rescuing one another. Not by becoming two halves of some miraculous whole.

By staying close enough to witness it.

Learning when to push. When to leave things alone. When to say the difficult thing. When to apologise. And when the situation would be considerably improved by food.

Marriage, incidentally, was not Qi’s idea. She had always struggled with the concept - the ceremony, the symbolism, the whole logistical package.

Ben eventually found the argument that worked.

“For tax purposes.”

And that, apparently, was romantic enough.

Their story isn't really one enormous love story.

It is thousands of very small ones.

A hand reaching out in the middle of the night.
Someone remembering who you are when you've momentarily forgotten.
Making each other laugh at precisely the wrong time.
Choosing, after the easy days and the decidedly less easy ones, to keep building the same life.

Not always the easiest home.

Definitely not always the tidiest.

But theirs.

And this June, they're gathering some of the people who became part of that life along the way.

People from different places, different years and completely different chapters - many of whom have never met, but all of whom have left something behind in theirs.

So perhaps this isn't really about getting everyone together to watch Ben and Qi get married.