Bernadette Lee, 31, and Tom Moore, 35, both senior managers at KPMG, were married on April 2, 2016, in Melbourne, Australia
Australian-born Tom had never been to Britain before when he arrived in London for a secondment to the auditer KPMG. Bernadette was sent down to reception to meet him. “She had a lovely, big, beaming smile, which was a good start,” he says.
Six months later, they were assigned to work on the same project. “He was a very friendly guy from the off,” says Bernadette, but it wasn’t until Tom’s two-year visa was almost at an end and he was starting to consider his next move that he asked her on a date. His thoughts at the time: “I may as well see how this goes, and, if it’s worthwhile,I’ll hang around.” Bernadette says: “I had no idea Tom was interested in me. My personality is not usually to take a risk on something, so it was quite out of character for me.”
They went to a bar in Shoreditch, east London. Tom was then given the go-ahead to stay in the UK with KPMG. He lived with housemates in Brixton. Bernadette was based at her family home in Essex. Her mother is from Goa and her father from Calcutta.
“Tom has got a great sense of humour,” says Bernadette. “He is one of the kindest, most generous people I know.” He studied commerce at the University of Melbourne. An Australian rules football fan, he remembers watching Bernadette deliver a presentation at work before they became a couple and being impressed by her intellect. In 2014, Bernadette was asked by KPMG to go on a six-month secondment to Australia.
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She recognised that it was a wonderful opportunity, but was reluctant to leave Tom, especially after he had left his family to be with her in England. “We were were quite serious about each other,” she says. “I felt it could really go somewhere.”
Tom says: “I didn’t give it a second thought. It was because I thought we were serious and something would happen, I wasn’t too stressed.” He knew the people in Sydney who Bernadette would be working alongside. She moved into a serviced apartment in the city and they spoke via Facetime every day. While she visited his parents in Port Fairy, Victoria, he had Sunday lunch with her parents in Essex. “It was a life swap for six months,” she says.
Although Bernadette missed Tom, she acknowledges: “I got to love Australia in my own way.” Towards the end of her stay, she met up with him in Melbourne for his older sister’s wedding last spring. The day after the wedding, Tom surprised Bernadette with a proposal on bended knee on the banks of the Yarra river. He had spoken to her father and chosen a ring.
They decided to marry in Australia “because it is close to our hearts”. The 4pm service was held at Xavier College Memorial Chapel, which is part of Tom’s former school in Melbourne. The archbishop of Cardiff, the Most Rev George Stack, who baptised Bernadette, made the journey to marry them. Bernadette’s four bridesmaids were friends from the University of Nottingham, where she studied economics. A childhood friend of Tom, who moved to the UK at the same time, was his best man. Bernadette’s family are musical. Her father sang a psalm, accompanied by her younger brother on the organ. Bernadette sings in her church choir and has performed at friends’ weddings. For her own, she hired a 30-strong choir.
The reception was held at a wedding venue on the banks of the Yarra river. Tables at the sit-down wedding breakfast were named after the first fleet of 11 ships to sail from England with soldiers and convicts who settled in Australia. The twelfth table was named after the ship that carried Tom’s greatgreat-grandfather from Bristol to Australia. The wedding favours included Fortnum & Mason tea, and biscuits baked by Tom’s grandmother, who is in her nineties.
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With his speech over, Tom was starting to relax when he was reminded of his final duty: the first dance. “It caught me off guard,” he says. He followed Bernadette’s lead to Stevie Wonder’s For Once in My Life. For their honeymoon, they went to Hamilton Island, off the coast of Queensland. Back in England, they have moved into a family friend’s house in Essex while they look for a place of their own.