Emma Sage, 35, civil servant, and Richard McCord, 36, mergers and acquisitions, will be married today

“In spite of everyone’s suggestions, we’re not going with a pumpkin theme,” says Emma, who will marry Richard today at Oriel College, Oxford. They both studied engineering at the university, but they did not meet until ten years after they graduated.

“I’m sure we would have crossed paths many times while we were there. It’s a tantalising thought that your eyes may have met all those years ago, but it didn’t register,” says Richard. “You might hope that it hadn’t happened, as it would belie the myth of love at first sight.”

They moved in the same circles and had the same goals, and both ended up working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, sitting around the corner from each other. They finally met at a team-building exercise in Greenwich in 2006.

Once they got back to the office, Emma noticed Richard more and more. “He was always standing around the fax tray, which was just by my desk,” she says.

“I might have started spending a bit more time about her side of the office,” Richard admits. “Possibly under phoney pretexts.”

A few weeks later they went out on their first date. “It was a joint effort in a way,” she says. “I was going down to the pub with some friends and I bumped into Richard, so I told him he could join us if he liked. I felt proud of myself that I had been really casual, but once we got into the pub, he was there within 15 minutes.”

Despite “trying to play it cool”, so much so that Richard thought he had misread the signals, she eventually opened up a bit more, and a few drinks later she made a move. “I asked him if he would go to dinner with me the following week. He said yes and our first date was on October 27, so it will be almost three years to the day when we get married.”

Since then, they have changed their lifestyles completely. “We decided to take three months to travel the world together. It was something we had always dreamt about, but would not have done without the other. When we got back, we realised that neither of us wanted to go back to our high-pressured lifestyle any more, so made quite dramatic career choices,” says Emma. “I have gone from being this single girl about London, in true Bridget Jones style, to being engaged and in a new job. He has given me the courage and confidence to make big decisions.”

“She’s very kind and generous, fun-loving and intelligent,” says Richard. “She is hard-working too. My dad has an expression he uses about her: she’s a very capable woman. Frighteningly so.” Emma’s mother has an expression for Richard as well: “He’s got a lot of spitfire in him,” she says. “It’s his Irish side. He makes it clear when he thinks something is rubbish.”

According to the bride, Richard always made clear his intentions: “Every time he had one drink too many he would say that he was planning to propose, or would apologise that he hadn’t already done so.” So at Christmas and at new year, she waited with bated breath — but there was nothing.

When Emma returned from a weekend away in Vienna without a ring on her finger, her mother took her aside and said: “Well, maybe he’s not the marrying type.” But he proposed this year, the day after Emma’s birthday, and months after everyone else thought he would.

“I had hoped he would propose on my birthday, but in true Richard style, he hadn’t gotten around to it. We visited Dunster Castle in the morning and just as we were about to jump in the car to come back to London, he said that we should go back to the gardens. He took me on to this bridge and I thought to myself, if only he would propose somewhere like this — and he did.”

After the ceremony takes place in Emma’s old college, they will head to the town hall for the reception.