What more could I give you on a very British Summer’s morning than a scorching love shoot on the white sandy beaches of Australia?! Submitted by lovely photographer Liesl Cheney, who I have been so lucky to work with here in the UK before she ventured off to a new start in Australia last year, captures the free-spirit of this gorgeous couple, their relaxed and comfortable love, and the most beautiful scenery.  It’s such a pleasure to be able to share her work again!

Melissa & Guilliam’s adventure begins in South Africa, and ends up on the other side of the world, in such a romantic tale…

Our love story began on a warm summers day in December almost ten years ago.  I had a friend from Australia come and visit me at home in South Africa, and she wanted to go and visit ‘The Oberholster family’ – she didn’t want to go alone as she had a little crush on my now husband!  I had heard of them before , they lived just up the road in the next block of town houses, but I had never met them before even though we went to the same schools.  I am convinced I was not good-looking enough at the time for him to have noticed me at school but nonetheless, fate seemed to have its way and I made my way up to their house with her for a visit.

When we arrived, Guilliam opened up the front door to invite us in; there he was with his awesome smile, great hair and charming personality… I was hooked!! According to him when he saw me he couldn’t believe how brown I was and thought I was some exotic beauty, hahaha, and that was it, he was hooked!  From that day on we were pretty much inseparable and spent almost every waking minute together and the minutes we were apart were filled with letters and text messages – which I somehow managed to write down in a journal for 5 years! During this time I went to De Aar in South Africa for about 6months and then to Scotland with my sister and then back to my hometown to work in a guesthouse. In the mean time Guilliam was up in Pretoria and Studying his BSC in Quantity Surveying.  Eventually after many months of long distance phone calls and a visit every second month, his parents decided to move me up to Pretoria as well and there I was, working for Estee lauder and Elizabeth Arden until I decided to do my Degree in Early Childhood Education.

The proposal happened during a month long trip to Australia. We both loved the country and Guilliam wanted to show me what it was like as I had not been to see it yet. We travelled to most of the cities except Perth and ended our journey in Sydney for New Year. I thought, it would be so awesome if he proposed with all the fireworks at Sydney Harbour Bridge on New Years Eve and was quite dismayed when this didn’t happen.  According to him he didn’t want to pop the question amongst all the chaos and drunken people, so he came up with something better and we went to Watson’s Bay after New Years Day and had a lovely picnic by the lighthouse overlooking the cliffs and the wide open ocean and bang! Out came the ring and the speech and the question and the tears and the YES

We always knew that moving to Australia was in the cards and decided we would move here after our studies, we also decided that we would move over and save our own dollars and pay for our own wedding.    So we moved over to Perth after our studies, engaged already for two years, used the first year to settle in and then decided to choose a date to get married for when we were back home to visit the family.