Last year, a message dropped in my inbox:

Our venue is a rambling, listed art-deco house, perched on the edge of a private cove in Cornwall. Since John and I fell in love, over 4 years ago, we have enjoyed many wonderful times in what is now our favourite place in the UK. When John proposed on a Georgia beach in February this year, we both knew we wanted to marry in Cornwall, and to share the place we love with those that we love.

Many venues seemed too glossy, too pricey, too un-Cornish, and not very us. Then a friend told Mum of a private cove and an old house that could be hired in its entirety for weddings and holidays.

When my parents visited Prussia Cove in March this year, a call to me at work told me everything that I needed to know: 'John will love it darling, you will need to tell your friends there are no en suites or heated towel rails but if they can cope with shabby rather than shabby chic, then it's the perfect place'.

We arrived with my parents on a day where the rain was pouring so heavily down the car windows, we could barely see out, crawling slowly down the steep, uneven track to the house. John leaped out to run to the front door, and was lost immediately in the rain. Five minutes later he returned; a kind man who had hired the house for his mother's birthday, was happy for us to look around. He and his wife, heavily pregnant with twins, showed us into a magical, mysterious house, with twisting passageways, arranged over three floors down the cliff. We fell in love with it straight away, and saw that it was already filled with love, as children and family members moved happily in and around the rooms, commending it to us as the perfect place for a romantic, if unconventional wedding, where we would make what we wanted of the place and share it with those dearest to us.

This is Anna and John.