Laura Morris, 27, teacher, and Leo Miller, 30, customer relations manager, married on August 1, 2009

He wooed her on a beach in Cuba, with Shakespeare. Emboldened by a dash of rum, Leo read his beloved the lines of Sonnet 29:

“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries . . .”

That, Leo explains, is what he feels for Laura, a woman with “high romantic standards” whom he had planned to “sweep off her feet”. She had wondered why Leo had insisted on bringing the complete works of the Bard to Cuba. But Leo is one for meticulous planning. The day before proposing he had scouted out nice spots on the beach. The night he proposed he invited Laura for a beachside stroll after dinner and opened his book. Then he passed the sonnets to Laura, and asked her to pick one to read to him. “Although I had studied Shakespeare’s sonnets during my English degree, at that moment I couldn’t think of a single one.” Instead Leo urged her to turn the page. “Instead of a sonnet there was a heart-shaped hole”. Leo had cut heart-shaped holes through each remaining page in the volume. At the bottom nestled a ring. “It was quite spectacular, and Leo made the most amazing speech,” Laura recalls.

She is not averse to planning herself. Their wedding had an Alice in Wonderland theme. After a church service at St Andrew’s, Kingsley, they had croquet on the lawn and games of chess at their reception at Horsley Park in Leatherhead. Laura’s father and brother, skilled illustrators, produced a large sketch featuring the bride as Alice at the tea party. Why? “We met in Oxford, where the story is set,” says Laura. She was 18, a first-year at Oxford Brookes. He was 21, on a year’s placement with the trading division of Oxfam’s headquarters. After a few months the romance fizzled out.

And that might have been that. Only Laura never quite forgot Leo. “He was the one that got away.” And three years later, by chance, his older brother, Ben (later best man), began to date Jodie (later bridesmaid), a good friend of Laura’s. She was working in a local pub, and recognised Ben from Laura’s photographs. Soon a double-date was set up. Leo asked Laura for her number. “I’m stubborn and refused.” Jodie supplied it and he texted her on the coach as she travelled back to London. Within a week they met for drinks, the following weekend was spent in Torquay on Leo’s father’s boat. Leo says Laura is “beautiful, incredible, very funny — the more I got to know her, the more I could see the effect she has on other people’s lives. She has so many followers.” Laura says: “Leo is great — so loving, such fun, and there for me 100 per cent.”