Not Even the Taliban Can Stop This Wedding
Not even the Taliban can stop the preparations and planning of a wedding as engaged couple Kirstie Main and Stu Deakin are proving all too well!
The couple are serving a six month tour in totally different parts of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province and although the wedding date has been booked for July 2008, they will not return to the UK until the end of April.
A great deal of the arrangements had already been made before they both departed to Afghanistan last November, but as we all know, weddings have a way of turning lives upside down and there is always something vital that has been missed out and needs ‘fixing’..
As well as those last minute arrangements that are bad enough when you are at home with friends and family to help you, but to be thousands of miles away from where you are getting married not to mention miles away from each other while helping to keep the peace in a different country can be no easy task for anybody!
It is stressful enough to plan a wedding even with the help and assistance of family and friends, but this couple are also having to content with the daily extra strain of coping with the Taliban threat, as well as having to deal and get along with the only way of speaking to each other is via a satellite phone inside a tank-like Warrior Armoured vehicle in the wintry desert. As indeed the all important wedding gift list was carried out during one conversation while others were listening in to.
Words of comfort and sweet nothings are not in the couple’s daily routine as everything they say to each other is public knowledge and each conversation rather than end with ‘love you’, or ‘bye for now sweetheart’ ends with the less than romantic army radio style of ‘over’.
Army Couple Serving in 52 Infantry Brigade
The couple are in Afghanistan as part of 52 Infantry Brigade, the current British task force in Helmand. Kirstie who is a troop commander and Stu a Fire Support Team Commander who is responsible for providing cover for Scots Guards troops operating in Warriors (and up until 5 years ago was a former adventure training instructor in the Lake District) got engaged in 2007 and have planned their wedding to take place in July at the Sandhurst Military Academy.
Kirstie as the bride-to-be spends her day dressed in army desert combats along with body armour as well as having the added responsibility of the welfare and safety of 30 soldiers’ to consider.
Days of trying on white dresses, chatting with bridesmaids, choosing what flowers are in season and dreaming of floating down the aisle are set aside for the time being while she concentrates on being an army leader rather than a wedding planner.
There will be a matter of a few weeks after they return to the UK for double checking all is well with the wedding plans and finalise their preparations to enable them to walk down the aisle to say the vows they have waited long enough for and to be joined again against all odds.
