Stepping out barefoot onto the sand, I was ready to get married.
With delicate hair pins framing my face and a stunning white dress, I walked down the aisle to where my husband-to-be, Peter, then 44, was waiting.
After dating for eight years, we were ready to tie the knot.
Although, we had known each other for longer.
You see, we’d lived across the street from each other in Pennsylvania until he’d moved with his ex-wife and two children, Sam and Sarah, to Connecticut in 1996.
Meanwhile, I was also married and raising my three children, Tom, now 39, Sarah, now 35, and Zachary, now 32.
But in 2001, he gave me a call out of the blue.
‘I’m getting a divorce,’ he’d told me.
‘Me too,’ I replied.
Talking frequently, it wasn’t long before we were dating.
While the kids were growing up, we kept long distance, with me in Pennsylvania and him in Connecticut.