Nishta and I got engaged on Sandymount Beach in Dublin. It's a place we often liked to walk and it reminded her of her native Mauritius. Unaware that I planned to propose Nishta believed that this was going to be just another walk and that I had packed some fresh fruit in a backpack for us to eat. In fact I had the ring hidden in the backpack and I gambled that she simply wouldn't look in the bag before we left.

I hadn't a particular spot on the beach selected in advance (so disorganised) and on the day I planned to propose a spell of glorious sunshine had broken and some darker rain clouds now appeared in the sky (so unlucky).

So I essentially chased the sun across the beach before stopping for us to "sit on the stones and eat our picnic". This is when I asked Nishta to marry me and thankfully for me she said yes.

Shortly later we noticed this stone shaped like a heart in the spot where I had proposed. Our heart stone.

Some months later we decided to go back and see if we could get it. We walked back along the beach toward the same spot but the nice sands that we had on our engagement day was now replaced by a thick and truly foul smelling sludge that covered the beach.

Not to be deterred we waded through the sludge, slipping, laughing and at one point losing a shoe before eventually reaching our heart stone. We then hauled it back to our car and headed home to clean off the horrid smelling sludge that now covered both us and the stone.

The stone featured at our wedding and now is in its final home at the start of the pathway that leads to our front door. It reminds us of happy times, of the love and laughter with which we collected it.