She started a website to find a partner. 3 years later, this happened.

In the shower this morning, I was thinking about how to tell the story of the last three years of my life, and how I got to here. And then it came to me in the voices of George Michael and Aretha Franklin, and the words ‘I knew you were waiting for me’.

My whole life, I always knew that I’d meet ‘The One’. That one person who was meant just for me.

Call it being born to romantic parents, or perhaps I ended up with just really loving genes, but I knew in my heart that I was destined to find a great romance.

What I didn’t expect was to get to my 29th birthday, and not have found it yet. Most of my friends were getting engaged, married, having babies, and I was still looking.

My other problem was that unfortunately no-one could tell I was a lesbian, which makes it pretty hard to meet a girl. Especially, when you’re into other feminine-looking women. There’s nothing quite like making eyes at a girl in a bar only to find out that she’s actually straight.

It was a problem, but one I was confident I could solve. Being from a marketing and advertising background, surely there was a way I could use my persuasive selling powers for the good of my own love life?

It was in May 2011, after drinks and dinner with some ad-land friends that we came up with the idea of advertising myself via a blog.

It was to be called ‘Reasons to Date Courtney Beck’, and would revolve around me listing a different reason every day why a girl might want to consider dating me. If girls, or should I say women, were interested they could submit a photo of themselves and the reason we’d hit it off on a date.

Within weeks, my crazy idea had been picked up by the media. Why you ask? Well, I honestly think that we’re all looking for love. And who doesn’t love an underdog?!

Due to the blog’s media exposure, I went from effectively not dating anybody to receiving about 15 date requests a week. It was like the dating heavens had opened up on me!

I even had a couple of marriage proposals, the most memorable one from someone wearing a ski mask.

One thing I did commit to at the start of the blog was to document all my dates and to be very honest about the journey. This included being rejected a few times. Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like public rejection. If I may give you a metaphor, it’s a bit like standing in front of the whole Colosseum and asking somebody to love you, and them saying no.

I remained positive.

About four months in to writing my blog, I received an email from a woman in Sydney. It was beautifully written, funny and articulate. There was no photo, but I knew just from her words that I needed to reply instantly. She did express that she had no interest in dating me as she’d recently come out of a relationship, but wanted to congratulate me on my ballsy efforts and if I was ever in Sydney, she’d love to catch up.

The first time we met, I’d come to Sydney for the weekend to spend time with the girl that I was chasing. I had a couple of spare hours on the Saturday morning, so she suggested we check out the Lego exhibition on at the Sydney Aquarium (I’m very much in touch with my inner child). Little did I know that those two hours spent at the Aquarium would form a spark that I could not let go of.

I went home contemplating a bigger question: ‘If I was going to marry any of the girls I’d met so far, who would it be?’.

The Italian, as I fondly referred to her as in my blog, was everything I wanted and more. She had every quality I was looking for. She was beautiful inside and out. Funny, nerdy, liked talking in strange accents and so many other things that I grew to fall in love with. I loved her heart and her mind.

After more than two amazing years together, on the 1st of February I asked my beautiful Italian to marry me. I’ve never been more sure of anyone or anything in my entire life; she was the one that I had been searching for.

The proposal was to be at her 30th birthday.

As a member of the advertising world, this wasn’t just going to be any proposal. It was going to be epic, and required a team of awesomeness to pull this proposal off. The proposal, would affectionately become known as ‘Project Sparkle’.

Project Sparkle consisted of 30 of The Italian’s closest friends, a rooftop overlooking Sydney city and Jordan Millar (a ridiculously talented Sydney musician).

To cut a long story short, Jordan played an amazing live set and finished up with a version of our song, ‘You to me are everything‘ by The Real Thing.

I got up to do my speech, which went a little something like this:

“Jules – Happy birthday my love! Over two years ago, I asked you to be my girlfriend via text. It wasn’t the greatest move I ever made, and you told me if I ever asked you to marry me via text we’d have a big problem. So I’m not going to do that, but I am going to do this…”

I got down on my knee and produced a ring and asked ‘Will you marry me?’.

She said yes, and you can watch the video here:

Out of the many incredible moments in my life thus far, that moment will go down as one of the greatest.

For me, this has been a story of dreams coming true, and ballsy ideas that pay off.

I strongly believe that there is someone on this planet for everyone – it’s just that sometimes to find them you’ve got to go on an epic journey, be proposed to by women in ski masks, get your heart publicly trodden on, fear that you’ll end up a cat lady… and just when you’re about to give up, there he or she will be.

Waiting for you, just like the song.

This post was first published on Courtney’s blog and has been republished with full permission.