A man took his girlfriend on a romantic holiday to Barbados where he proposed and three days later surprised her with a fully orchestrated ‘magical’ wedding. Adam Blakey and his girlfriend of seven years flew from Manchester Airport to the Caribbean island in April.
Adam convinced Victoria that the trip was to celebrate her 40th birthday, when in fact he had arranged the proposal and wedding without his wife’s knowledge. The businessman kicked off the surprise by bringing Victoria’s parents, who hadn’t left the country in more than 15 years, to the airport.
But it was the first of many surprises for Victoria, as just a few days later it would be her wedding day. Adam chose Barbados to honor Victoria’s Caribbean heritage and proposed surrounded by roses placed in the shape of a heart on the beach outside their hotel, before tying the knot at the same location a few days later.
READ MORE: Manchester Airport reports record May with 2.8m passengers ahead of euro surge
Adam, who was previously married, had planned to marry Victoria sooner but said it took seven years to complete the paperwork for his divorce, which was not helped by the coronavirus pandemic. He added that he felt the need to take the weight of wedding planning off his partner’s shoulders as a thank you for her patience.
He began planning the wedding in early January 2024, just a week after his divorce was finalized, telling PA Real Life: “I always knew I wanted to marry her, but marriage was a difficult conversation to have and she was. patient.
“I tried to reassure her (the divorce) was lengthy because of the issues in it, but she was so patient with the whole process that I loved her even more. I didn’t want to be in a long ) engagement for years and years waiting for her dream wedding , because she’s already expecting, I wanted to plan the whole wedding for her so that she would basically say yes and then everything would happen.”
He manages to keep his plans under wraps from Victoria as he organizes a surprise holiday for them every year where his wife never knows the destination, and on this occasion he also blindfolds her so he can secretly bring her parents to the airport. He explained: “She thought she was going away in April for my 40th birthday.
“I’m a bit of an old romantic so I always take her away, but she never knows where she’s going. When we actually left, she wasn’t surprised that she didn’t know because for seven years all we did was travel and do crazy things.
(Image: Ryan Alleyne/PA Real Life)
“When we got to the airport she was blindfolded and she really thought it was just part of the process. She didn’t think anything of it. She took the blindfold off and saw her mum and dad at the airport and she was absolutely terrified.”
Adam, from Blackpool, arranged for his wife’s parents to join them in Barbados, which Victoria described as “the best surprise you could ever do in your life”. “We were all sitting there thinking, ‘just wait a few days,'” Adam said.
The couple enjoyed a day swimming with sea turtles, viewing shipwrecks and riding a catamaran before Adam’s seasickness and nerves led to the proposal on April 14, the same day as his 40th birthday. He got down on one knee on the beach surrounded by heart-shaped roses and said: “We were walking along and everything was lit up and all the lights were positioned so it really lit up the heart shape.
“All the candles were really romantic, the sea was just a perfect surface, it wasn’t very close but you could hear it in the background. The steel drummers were playing on the side so it sounded great and it was just absolutely like something out of a movie.
(Image: Collect/PA Real Life)
While the proposal may have taken Victoria by surprise, the fact that Adam was already planning a wedding a few days later added to the shock. He said: “In the wedding proposal I said, ‘Look, I’ve been planning this for the last three months and our whole wedding day in two days’ and then she just went crazy. But then she’s the plan.”
Adam initially wanted to marry his partner the day after the proposal, on 15 April, but was advised by a local bridal shop that he needed time to adjust to Victoria’s arrangements. The couple instead married on the same beach in an intimate ceremony with Victoria’s parents and about 15 guests from the hotel who heard about the surprise wedding and wanted to join in, on April 17.
Adam said: “The craziest thing that happened there, believe it or not, was on the wedding day. Her nanny’s favorite song was Somewhere Over The Rainbow, so we played it on steel drums as she walked down the aisle.
“Barbados had a solar halo that day. They’ve never had one before. It’s a perfect rainbow around the sun, which was just crazy, and that’s why she walked down the aisle. Of course it was meant to be. It was just unbelievable, we all couldn’t believe it.”
(Image: Collect/PA Real Life)
Adam joked that he created a “surprise within a surprise” for the couple’s return as he threw a party with their close friends and family under the guise of celebrating his 40th birthday before revealing their marriage. He said: “I have planned a big surprise for my 40th birthday. I involved my parents and her parents in the planning.
“They all thought they were going to come for my 40th birthday and also Vic’s birthday, but then we went in and surprised them by actually getting married. It was like a surprise within a surprise within a surprise, which is just crazy.”
The couple, who have been together for seven years, met on Tinder and Adam soon knew he wanted to marry Victoria. He said: “She was my ‘Tinderella’, she always says. I knew I wanted to marry her from day one, honestly. I was head over heels and it just worked. When you know it, you know it.”
(Image: Collect/PA Real Life)
Adam knew she wouldn’t be able to witness the planning of her own wedding, so he filmed every stage of the process for her.
“Because she wasn’t involved in the planning stages, which she’s very grateful for, because it’s so stressful, I wanted to record the whole thing for her so she could watch it back and see every step I took to ask my mom and dad.” clearance, going into the ring, the suits and everything in between,” he said.
The couple have since shared their videos on TikTok, with one video of their parents’ reaction to the surprise earning nearly 40,000 views. “If money was never an object, we’d love to give someone else the gift of a secret wedding.” Adam said.
To learn more, visit: www.tiktok.com/@thesecretweddinghq.
For more of today’s top stories, click here.