Maddison Moses and Sam Brisby both joined their families on a 12-day cruise where they met and fell in love.
The then teenagers vividly remember the first time they locked eyes, with Maddison describing it as an instant connection.
“The first day we got on the cruise I actually walked past Sam and we noticed each other straight away, but we kept walking,” an excited Maddison, from Taree, on the NSW mid North Coast, told news.com.au
“There were a few more times we walked past one another and checked each other out.”
However, it wasn’t until they met in the Pacific Dawn cruises’ ‘kids club’ when they finally built up the courage to talk to one another.
From there, the pair became inseparable, hanging out on-board the P&O ship every day until their unexpected romantic getaway came to an end.
A then 17-year-old Maddison described Sam as the “man of her dreams” and couldn’t wait to tell her parents.
“I told them on the second night (of the cruise),” she said.
“I actually slipped a note under their door saying ‘I found the man of my dreams.’
“At first they were like, ‘We told you no boyfriends until you’re 18,’ but when they met him for lunch the next day, they fell in love with him.”
Maddison, now 20, said that as cliched as it sounds she knew Sam was “the one” during their “Titanic moment”.
“We were standing at the front of the ship at the bars, and he was behind me with his hand on my hand,” Maddison explained.
The pair spoke about their values, which “perfectly” aligned, and that’s when Maddison realised she had found “everything she ever wanted in a guy”.
But just as all good things come to an end, the young and in love couple had no choice but to part ways when the cruise made its final dock.
“It was hard to say goodbye because we didn’t know when we were going to see each other again, especially because he lives two-and-a-half hours away in the Central Coast,” Maddison said.
“We were also still both in school, but over the next few months he would come to Taree and I would go to the Coast.”
The pair kept their relationship alive by visiting each other’s families, making the five-hour trip by rail as often as they could.
Fast forward four years. Sam, now 19, popped the question to Maddison on Hargraves Beach on the NSW Central Coast.
The young couple are due to tie the knot in April and while they would have loved to get married on P&O Cruises’ Pacific Dawn ship, it was farewelled from the fleet in 2017.
The pair will get married in the Hunter Valley, with hundreds of comments wishing them well and the cruise company sharing the couple’s love story on its Facebook page.
Images: News.com.au
