Sara Farbrace, 38, project consultant, and Paul Nicholson, 64, retired regional sales director, married on October 22, 2009

Few couples can say they were married at sea. But Sara and Paul chose to tie the knot on a 12-port tour of the Caribbean, marrying somewhere in the aquamarine seas near Curaçao off the coast of Venezuela.

For Sara, going on a Caribbean cruise was a childhood dream. “I used to watch Love Boat as a kid,” she says. Two weeks after the wedding, she is “still buzzing. It was like a fairytale”.

She and Paul signed their marriage certificate on October 22, in a library festooned with white roses. Afterwards, with the photographer, they went walkabout on the ship. “We went up to the bridge of the ship — there were people sunbathing in their bikinis who applauded,” says Sarah.

As they ate their wedding cake and drank champagne in the ship’s restaurant, the other diners cheered and applauded. “I had no idea it was going to be like that. It was extraordinary,” says Paul. “Sara had a whale of a time.”

“To think we went away for a nice quiet wedding,” she jokes. “We ended the night in the casino and got a bit lucky.”

The pair met 12 years ago in Stockport. They worked in the same company. “Sara was in the sales office and I was a sales manager,” says Paul. He asked her out for a drink. “We got on extremely well.” But when, a couple of years later, Sara moved to another job in Shrewsbury, their romance became a long-distance one. Paul and Sara regularly travelled the 100 miles that separated them between Nottingham and Shrewsbury. “It had good sides — we weren’t tied to each other every weekend,” says Sara.

But early on it was clear: their connection was special. “I went on holiday with a couple of my sisters to Rhodes and, instead of partying, I was on the telephone to him every day,” says Sara. “I thought, ‘I can’t live without him’.” Paul, she says, has “a very caring personality — he constantly puts me before himself”. Paul says: “Sara was very different to anyone I’d ever met. She’s quite single-minded. I admire her grit.”

Married once before, Paul had thought he would never do so again. He caught Sara by surprise last year as they took a weekend break at Bodelwyddan Castle in North Wales. “We had just unpacked and were having a glass of wine when he asked me,” says Sara. “I was so surprised I had to ask him to repeat the question.”