After only a week of dating, Timothy Chee began sending his now-wife Candice Catherine handwritten love letters, the first of which started with a capital “W.”
Candice, 25, received 13 more letters during the Australian couple’s three-year relationship with each love note starting off with a capital letter that would eventually spell out the words “Will you marry me.”
“Tim and I didn’t live far away from each other but we sent letters because the idea of having our hearts poured out in the form of paper meant we had tangible memories to look back on,” Candice told Daily Mail Australia. “I am very difficult to surprise so this totally caught me off guard!”
The couple went on a special holiday together to Hamilton Island, Australia, and a picnic at Watsons Bay, where the couple had their first date, before Timothy revealed the secret message in the letters and popped the question.
“I woke up on the morning of December 16, 2015, with a letter next to me instructing me to get dressed and to only come out when I’m fully ready. As soon as I opened the door, I found rose petals and candles everywhere — my heart skipped a beat and I knew it was coming,” Candice said. “He sat me down in the living room with all the letters that he had written to me on the table. We read them out one by one reliving the memories of our dating years. After we read all of them he then carefully arranged the letters and asked me to look at them.”
When she finally saw the message, Candice began to cry tears of joy, even though she said Timothy has always been very romantic.
“On our wedding day Tim sang a song he’d written for me two months after we started dating,” she added. “So he’d been saving this piece of music for years.”
The pair started off as friends after their mutual friends organized a gathering on Maroubra Beach in 2009.
“Even though it took a long time for our friendship to blossom into love we are so grateful that we got to become friends first. The fact that we knew each other so well made the relationship feel so secure,” Candice said. “We always look back and say we made the right choice by being good friends first.”
