Our story
We all have the year of the apocalypse forever etched into our minds. While the world stockpiled toilet paper and perfected sourdough baking, love blossomed in the most unlikely of circumstances. Bulgaria had somehow managed to keep it lowkey and had extremely few Covid cases in the summer, which made it a mirage in the eyes of two emigrants in their early twenties.
Martin had just graduated from his Psychology degree from Bath, from the glamorous setting of his backyard in Prague. He then spent his summer partying along the Bulgarian seaside with different people, until he decided to spend a weekend visiting his uni friend Mia (maid of honour extraordinaire) in a tiny coastal village he had never been to before - Sinemorets.
Ana had to quickly swap out her suits for oversized hoodies when she established a new PwC HQ in her bedroom in France, before she decided that she needed a change of scenery and a break. She made a super spontaneous, last-minute decision to go to the one place that’s always felt like home, the place she’s been to every summer since she was 10 years old and where she’s grown up the most - Sinemorets.
He noticed her the moment she walked in, wearing a casual summer jumpsuit that would later make a comeback at their legal ceremomy. She was bubbly, warm, witty and spoke to him like they were old friends. In the ten minutes it took them to move to the bar afterwards, Martin told Mia four times that he thought her friend was very pretty. The wine may have been an enhancer to the relentless enthusiasm.
Ana also felt herself getting drawn to Martin in a way she had never, ever experienced before. There was something about this incredibly charismatic, extroverted, effortlessly joyful and funny guy that she found irresistible. So the following day at sunrise, as they were both sat on a bench overlooking the cliffs and the sea, she made the first move and kissed him.
They spent a week together staying at her place, suspended in time - watching the sun rise and set, swimming, dancing, cliff diving, and having fun with their friends. By the end of that week, they both knew they had fallen too deep for “just a summer thing”, but made no such confessions to each other. Over the next two weeks, Ana, in her typical “all or nothing” fashion, met all his closest friends, his parents and his sister, and gave him a one-way ticket to France for his birthday to kick-start his year abroad. All casually, obviously.
Ana set off for France first. When they dropped her off at the airport, Mia asked Martin what he said to make her smile like that and he replied “I told her I loved her”. And of course she had said it back.
A week later, as they lay on a beach in the Côte d'Azur and she was playing with his hair, he looked up at her and admitted that despite their original agreement, he believed that what they had was too special not to give long-distance a try. They then attempted to set Martin up in Lyon, but between a global pandemic and no part-time jobs, the universe had other plans. Ana got called back to London for work, and without hesitation Martin asked “And what if I come with you?”
And just like that, less than six weeks after meeting each other, Martin and Ana started living together in a one-bedroom apartment in London. In lockdown. Some (read: everyone) might have called that a risky move. Others might have called it the pilot episode for a reality TV show (Ignacio). But for Ana and Martin, it was the most fun and wholesome way to spend lockdown they could have imagined.
Nearly five years later, their love has only deepend.
Martin is the calm to Ana’s chaos. On the third day of meeting each other, he had already noticed what makes her on edge and what calms her down, and he knew how to protect her peace.
Ana is the type of person who would cover the fridge with sticky notes with reasons why she loves him and would surprise him with a pillow fort and cheese board movie night.
Martin is the kind of person whose cuddles and kisses make all worries fade away and who would bring Ana a new type of plant after she’s had a tough week at work.
Ana brings daily sources of entertainment through the various outlets she finds for her unpredictable outbursts of energy: silly dancing, impromptu musical numbers about existential dread, sliding from one end of the corridor to the other, or finding innovative ways to decorate a very peaceful Martin on the sofa.
They are a powerful duo when it comes to navigating and tackling life’s many challenges and plot twists, but when it comes to board games, there can only be one winner.
On March 26th 2024, during their holiday in Portugal, ever so enamoured with the sea and the ocean, the couple decided to visit Cabo da Roca at sunset. There was something about the way the wind had bent and smoothed over the trees that really reminded Ana of that exact spot where their first kiss was, on the opposite coast of the continent, three and a half years prior. She told him this and he nonchalantly ignored it, smiling to himself.
As the sun broke through the clouds and the waves crashed below them, Martin got down on one knee. Ana couldn’t believe it at first, then she instinctively knelt down too, so that she could gaze into those gorgeous green-orange eyes as he declared his love, the same way he had gazed into hers before she leaned in on that bench at sunrise.
And the rest? The rest is only just the beginning.
Now that the cheesy part is out of the way: Ana and Martin cannot wait to bring all of their favourite humans together for a huge party to celebrate saying a bold “yes” to all those spontaneous suggestions they made to each other that brought them here and which started out that fateful night in Sinemorets.
