How my bloke won me over with a Facebook poke

Once upon a time there was a princess who was locked in a dragon-guarded tower.  A noble prince rode up to the tower on his horse, slayed the dragon, rescued the princess and the pair lived happily ever after.

That, right there, is an example of a classic, traditional fairytale: female in distress, male rescues, happily ever after.

Fairytales these days take quite a different format, with many sceptical that there even is such a thing.  But every person's love story is special, unique and is its own fairytale.

For instance, the 'fairytale' that I call my own is a fine, modern-day example of what is quickly becoming the popular social media fairytale.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in Howden.  He had big, bright blonde hair and an even bigger, bold personality to match.  Everyone at college knew who he was, and everyone who was about to start college knew who he was.

Upon finishing high school, a young, naive girl from Drax accepted a friend request on Facebook sent by said college boy.

A few months after starting college, the boy poked the girl on Facebook - classic 2008 for you, right there.

After months of 'poking' and the odd smile across the infamous 'fec', the first Facebook message came.  There was some flirting and a lot of attempts by boy to pursue girl, who played hard to get for a number of years.

University came and went and both kept in touch through the powers of social media.  Then last year, after we both swiped the right way on Tinder, we started talking regularly again.  I finally gave in to his persistence and we started going on dates and hanging out all the time.

Then, before we knew it, we were an item.

Six years after our first interaction on social media, it was social media that put us back in contact and brought us to the point we are at today.  There was no tower or dragon or horse, but instead a Facebook poke, a Tinder swipe and some Whatsapp messages.

Regardless of that, we are now living in our own house and engaged to be married.

We have now booked our wedding day - our parents got married on exactly the same day so we decided that, given that special link and coincidence, we should get married on that same date.  It just so turns out, that the date we have chosen is exactly eight years and one day after our first social media message was exchanged.  Little did I know after receiving said message that eight years later would be my last day as Miss Derham.

Fairytales used to be just black and white with the damsel in distress rescued by the knight in shining armour, but as times change so do people's ideas of what makes the perfect story and, as two people fall in love, they start their own voyage on their very own fairytale.

Some people's start in a club on a night out; others start in school or at uni; and others start on a dating app - but every one is special regardless of how traditional or different they may be.