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LOVE LETTERS

T HE BEST EXAMPLE I CAN THINK of is this: how would you feel on the morning of your wedding if your husband or wife-to-be sent you a loving...tweet? They’re all very well and good, but you’re not going to be able to show them to your grandchildren, are you? “Your

grandfather was so romantic, children, he managed to convey all his feelings for me and the history of our relationship into 140 characters! Here, let me show you a screenshot...”

Enough is enough. The modern world is all very good, but it’s lacking in romance. Good, old-fashioned, I can’t say the words to your face so I’m going to pick up a quill and write you a note, romance. It doesn’t matter if writing isn’t your strong point, if your spelling is atrocious or if your handwriting looks like a spider on roller-skates—you’re taking a moment to tell the person you love what they mean to you. You could write ‘Love ya sugar tits’ on a post-it, and they’d probably frame it for all eternity.

My husband and I have a history with letters, so I’m all too aware of how powerful they can be. Full disclosure time—promise you won’t laugh? Okay, here it goes. My mum decided to tidy my childhood bedroom shortly after I moved in with Dan, and in doing so found a letter I had written. I was about 13 at the time and I remember it very distinctly: I was sitting in my sister’s bedroom and I was watching Runaway Bride. In case you haven’t seen it, it stars Julia Roberts and Richard

Gere. She plays a lovely, but confused lady who has pegged it from no less than three weddings and has developed a bit of a reputation. Richard can’t stand her and thinks she’s a complete nightmare, but you’ll never guess what happens—they fall in love! Shocker, I know. Anyway, Julia Roberts is forced to really think about what she actually wants from a partner, rather than meeting someone and adopting all their hobbies and interests.

This struck a chord with my 13-year-old self. “Where is my pen?!” I imagine I cried, full of teenage angst and all the feelings. I decided that I would write a list. But not just any list—a letter to my future husband. Now, considering I had frizzy ginger hair, braces and enormous feet that would only fit inside men’s trainers, this was perhaps a bit optimistic, but so consumed was I with imagination and passion, that I committed my wants and needs to paper, for all eternity.

Upon reading this, ten years in the future, I was torn. What do I do with it? My first thought was: BURN IT. Obviously. My mum had already admitted reading it (breaking EVERY RULE IN THE PARENTING BOOK) so someone already knew my shame. It couldn’t get much worse. So I decided to give it to the person it was intended for. After all, it wasn’t really mine. It was Dan’s—it belonged to him and it had been lost in the post (aka my bedside cabinet, next to a troll—remember those?) for ten years. It was time for him to know exactly what he was getting himself into.

I gave him the letter and braced myself, expecting him to laugh hysterically. But something strange happened. He didn’t.

W O R D S B Y E M I LY C O L E

P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y C I N Z I A B R U S C H I N I P H O T O G R A P H Y

D R E S S B Y V E LV E T J O H N S T O N E

There is so much to be said for the modern world. What did we do beforeTwitter, digital cameras, email, online shopping and Facebook? As great asthey are, there’s something they all lack—permanence and preciousness.

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“THE MODERN WORLD IS ALL VERY GOOD, BUT IT’S LACKING IN ROMANCE.”

In fact, it was the first and only time in our relationship that I’ve managed to bring a tear to his eye. You see, when you meet someone special, you want them to know that they’ve changed everything. That this is something very new and very different. But how can you tell them? You’ve both had partners in the past and although you know that every former memory pales into insignificance, there is no way of proving this.

Except for us, there was. I gave him the letter my 13-year-old self had written for her future husband. I hadn’t given it to anyone else, because it wasn’t theirs. It was such a significant moment and I think it reassured Dan that he hadn’t been insane to move in with a girl he’d only met eight months previously. What’s eight months, when she wrote a letter to you, all those years ago? And now, knowing that she could only ever give it to one person, she’s given it to you. That, my friends, is how powerful a letter can be. It can also be deeply humiliating, but we’ll side-step that.

We’ve written little notes and signed off every text with ‘I really love you’ ever since. But we’ll skip forward a few years to our wedding day. I opened the gift bag Dan gave me to see he’d absolutely smashed it out the park—I could see a Mulberry box and a little blue Tiffany bag. But my hand didn’t reach for those things first—it reached for the little yellow envelope with the word ‘Baby’ written on it.

He’d bought special writing paper. And he’d taken himself to the office in the house that we had bought together and made into a home. In it, he told me to find a quiet moment to myself, to read the words he wanted me to see before we were man and wife. In a house swirling with madness and busyness, it gave me two minutes of calm and reminded me what the day was about. It wasn’t about my hair being perfect, or looking the most amazing I’d ever looked—this man had seen me without make-up. He’d seen me with stinking colds, with horrible cold sores and held my hair back when I was being sick. He had shown me that he loved me and now he was telling me, in the most important letter I would ever receive. I would keep it in the wallet he bought me forever more, so that every time I’m sat on a train, or I’m away from him and feeling down, I can read it and remember how we felt that morning.

Letters are so very powerful. In a world when a thought isn’t ‘real’ until 50 people have ‘liked’ it, they are something to be treasured. That’s the most precious gift you can give on your wedding day—a slice of realism when everything starts getting a bit fuzzy round the edges. A tangible piece of love that you can reach for in dark moments.

Emily is half of Script and Serif, a business producing bespoke magazines and newspapers for weddings. She also takes brilliant photos, has serious calligraphy skills and is currently working on a range of invitations. You can find out more about their work at scriptandserif.co.uk