Just a small town girl, living in a lowveld world…
Just a farmer boy, born and raised in White River.
We both took the Citybug going to University in Pretoria.
Bev and I had known of each other for a couple of years in high school. One of those “oh I’ve heard of him” type of people.
Bevan met his first love – cricket – when he was a few years old, playing in the garden with his dad and sisters. He pursued this love all throughout school – even going oversees to play the game of his heart. In matric, he decided he was going to take a gap year to continue with his cricket career – playing his heart out for the Titans academy. He then continued to fly solo to Scotland, so he could be doing what he loved for a living. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for me), Scotland wasn’t his home or his future, so he decided to make a U-turn, return to South Africa, and focus on a different path – agriculture.
As for me, I didn’t know the song of my heart from a young age. I loved school, dancing, being with my friends and am passionate about making people happy. I then decided, I would pursue this passion and study Oral Hygiene – hoping to make people feel more confident and beautiful by changing their smiles. Life didn’t quite work out for me in that way, I had a different path to help people in a different way using movement and mobility – aka sports science.
I had seen Bevan out a few times in my first year in University (Tuks of Niks), but he wasn’t really someone that I knew, so we would make awkward eye contact but that would be it. One night, I managed to greet him, and we both agreed that we would set each other up with friends of ours that evening – I introduced him to one of my friends from Varsity and he introduced me to one of his friends from his cricket academy.
Later in the year, I decided to join Tinder so I could get some giggles with my friends – some of the strange profiles you see on the app are hilarious. Much to my surprise, Bevan was on the app too, so we matched because we knew each other and thought it would be awkward if we didn’t. Later that afternoon, he sent me a message saying “well this is awkward”. I laughed because I thought that too and wasn’t sure what to respond to him. There was a Halloween party happening the next evening so I proceeded to tell him that I would see him the following evening because I knew he was going.
Cue Halloween night… I saw him in the bar wearing a bright red, sparkly tutu – I still have no idea what he was supposed to be dressed up as, by the way. We didn’t want to make things more awkward after the whole Tinder match so he came up to me and said he would see me around that evening. He did indeed see me later on that evening – we ended up dancing and chatting for most of the evening and both realised that being around each other wasn’t awkward at all.
Fast forward to 15 months later of bliss being Bev’s girl – meeting his family for the first time and him meeting mine, being showed the farm and all that goes with it, going on holidays together, studying together, laughing together and loving each other. When I thought our lives couldn’t be any better, COVID hit, separating us and the lives we had together. It was a long and lonely 8 months, trying to navigate my life without Bev.
3 missed calls and a Facebook message later, Bev asked if he could see me again so that we could be civil with each other if we were ever in the same place again. When I saw his mohawk haircut and his big blue eyes that I had become so familiar with, I knew it was going to be hard to look at him in a just a civil way. Luckily, he realized he couldn’t find anyone like me – dah – and didn’t want to be civil but rather try to get back to the way life was before COVID.
A year later, we moved into our very first home together (Carlse Clarke Clan – CCC for short). We were blessed with our first baby dog – Bella who eventually got a sister – Jesse a year later.
Next, followed our engagement, which is one of the most beautiful moments I’ve had in my life. Bev convinced me that he had organized an elephant ride at Elephant whispers for his mom’s birthday. At the last minute, his mom couldn’t go anymore so he proceeded to convince me that we couldn’t waste the opportunity he had organized and booked for his parents. We went bright and early to Elephant whispers on Saturday 27 th May where we rode an elephant named Tembo. After our ride, I was ready to go home so I jumped off the elephant and started walking off. The guide told me I was being rude by not thanking Tembo for taking us on a ride and gave me pellets to go and feed to him. Just as I finished feeding Tembo, I turned around and Bev was down on one knee. Tembo wanted to get in on the action too and tried to even steal the ring away from Bevs hands! After ugly crying for a few minutes, I eventually said yes. Breakfast followed at Hippo Hollows along with a surprise visit from my mom to celebrate our engagement.
We cannot wait for what our journey has yet to offer, but first, LETS GET MARRIED!!
