Who's Who at the Wedding

The Happy Couple

Sometime in November 1999, we met at Warwick Student Cinema, at Warwick University. How did we meet? A bizarre story is to be told...

Jo was working on the entrance door one evening. Phil was waiting for a friend of his (Tarik) to arrive to see the film with. However, he never arrived, so Phil spent a good deal of time standing outside the room doing nothing. Naturally, Jo was doing nothing for quite a while (can't remember which film it was but the show was not very busy), so we soon got talking. Phil has only a very limited memory of this event but, in Jo's words, "Phil came up to me and told me his life story". Phil was already a member of filmsoc too, but as a projectionist, so had spent little time with the stewards etc (there is something of a divide between the 'front of house' bods - stewards, duty managers etc, and the 'techies' - projecionists etc). Thus, we soon became good friends. Jo was also a projectionist, and Phil was only a trainee projectionist, so we soon arranged for Jo to be Phil's tutor on a regular basis! Naturally, it wasn't long before the string of 'co-incidences' was noticed by the rest of the society and people started talking...

In January 2000, Phil was at home, talking to his housemate, Ann, about (again) the fact that he really liked a girl called Jo, but was afraid to ask her out. Ann sent him to filmsoc with the words "Go out, and don't come back until you've asked her out!"
Yes maam! Jo said "Yes"....
Interestingly enough, the film on show that day was "American Pie", and Phil asked Jo out after we had just watched it together. Not your average start to a relationship!

Our relationship was put through possibly one of the hardest tests that university relationships can be when Phil went on his university placement year with Amec Rail, initially working for 6 months on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in Ashford, Kent, working at Beechbrook Farm, then for 6 months in Tottenham Hale in North London with P-way ("Permanent Way", i.e. maintenance of the permanent track - the ballast, sleepers and rails) on the West Anglia lines. During all this time, Jo was still at Warwick, doing her PhD.
We survived this very well, seeing each other roughly every two weekends, and phoning each other almost every day!

On 21st February, 2002, Jo's 23rd birthday, Phil took Jo out to Salingers Restaurent (part of the Village Hotel) in Coventry, and gave her a large box as her birthday present. The look of dissapointment on Jo's face was very evident (and very amusing) to Phil, as Jo had expected the present to be a very small box...
However, the box contained a toblerone, and gave Phil just enough time to remove the smaller box from his jacket pocket, take Jo's hand and "pop the question". Jo said "YES!" without a moments hesitation, and promptly had an "emotional overload", running away to the toilets! (Phil is never letting her forget this fact!!) Phil didn't quite know what to think, but she came back soon enough and we spent the rest of the evening together very happily, then went back to her house and Jo said "Ooh! It's just sunk in!" and started crying... Phil knew he had done the right thing!

We moved in together when Phil finished his placement year, in July 2002.

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Diana is Phil's sister, and she runs a website. However, she is blind, so a lot of the work involved in running a website is very hard for her to do. Thus, we now both work on Diana's website to keep it going and improve it. We are both now rather good at web design!

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Future plans? Phil's job is to be in Birmingham, and Jo is currently looking for a new job, possibly in Birmingham or Coventry or somewhere nearby-ish, but we both wish to continue living in Coventry because its nicer!

Phil was born in Dartford and lived in Hextable village, (near Swanley). He went to St Bartholomew's Roman Catholic Primary School in Swanley. At the age of 8, he moved to Orpington. For secondary education, he went to Darford Grammar School and then Orpington College, due to a slight mishap with his A-level results being not quite good enough...

Phil has three sisters: Liz, the youngest (call her Elizabeth and die!), who is a "Paediatric Recipiant Transplant Educator" (in laymans terms, a senior paediatric liver nurse) at Kings Hospital. Diana runs her own website with some help from both of us, and Jackie, the eldest, who works for Nippon Insurance in London.

He has almost finished a degree in Civil Engineering at Coventry University and gained a job at railway consultancy film, Scott Wilson in Birmingham, starting on 1st September, and as blokes seem to do, getting paid more than Jo! Hehe...

He is totally mad and a railway/train nut. He has always had a very busy life, being interested in stage lighting, drama/acting and computing while at school, even getting involved in running (an admittedly rather low-spec) sixth-form only network when in his sixth form. He then transferred his interests to film projecting at university. He also tried his hand at many other things while at University, such as canoeing, canoe polo (polo, but in canoes in a swimming pool!), hang gliding, radio DJ'ing (getting his own 2hr evening show on the Warwick Uni station) and even more besides. This earned him the title of:

Phil "I'm meant to be in another social" Holbourn!

He has plans to launch his own website, dealing with current affairs issues, trying to take a balanced view and trying to put both sides of the argument on the same site. It will feature many polls and forums to find out what public opinion is. This will happen sometime soon-ish, when he gets the time to write it! Keep your eyes peeled in about 3-4 months!

Jo was born in Nottingham and went to Nottingham Girls High School She then went to Warwick University and has stayed there ever since, gaining a BSc in Biological Sciences and an MSc in Analytical Chemistry. Then she started a Phd back in biochemistry which unfortunately didn't work out. She has just spent a year working as a technician in the microbiology group and is currently on the lookout for a new job in Coventry or Birmingham since she is now happily living with Phil

She is also mad and somewhat less of a train nut. (Edit from Phil: She still is a train nut - I almost contest that she is less of a train nut than me, although I admit she doesn't take a camera every time she goes near a railway line...)
She had a busy life, being involved in Bramcote Hills Swimming Club and later Chilwell Olympia Badminton Club. She then took up American line dancing. At university she was also involved in Warwick Student Cinema but left and took up singing with Revelation Rock-Gospel Choir.

Meet The Parents

Veronica and Steve live in Bramcote, Nottingham. Steve works as a service engineer for Linvatec, repairing medical equipment. Veronica works in the childrens department of Allders. Veronica likes cooking and gardening, especially pot plants and Steve is involved with the expeditions for The Duke of Edinburgh's award and is interested in computing.

Jo and Eric live in Orpington, Kent. Eric is now a retired schoolmaster. Jo works as an "Engineering Scheduler" for the S+T (Signalling and Telecomunications) department of Amec Rail, in Tottenham Hale (the same depot as where Phil did the second half of his university his placement year!). Eric is interested in photography, gardening at his allotment and computing, and is currently taking courses in advanced ECDL with a view to teaching it part time.
Jo's main interest is with Aikido at Goshinaikikwai Aikido Club in Dartford, but she also enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles and lots of gardening.
They are both heavily involved with Holy Innocents RC church in Orpington, their local parish church.

The Helpers - Those with an Official Role at the Wedding

Alison is Jo's younger (but taller) sister. She is currently aged 21 and finishing her second year in Radiography at Leeds University and doing her clinical practice at York Hospital. She is going out with Jon Tweed (who is studying Computer Programming at Leeds and has very helpfully written our gift list on this site). She is interested in casual swimming and badminton.

Becky (call her Rebecca and she'll hate you forever!) is Phil's niece, being the daughter of his second sister, Liz (call her Elizabeth and she'll hate you forever. Spot a pattern here...?). She is currently aged 12 and is now attending Secondary school at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar. Her favorite subject is currently Maths (Strange girl!), but she also enjoys computing and sport. When not at school, she enjoys swimming and cycling, and terrorising Phil's parents! To prove just how mad she is, she wants to become a teacher when she grows up, despite Phil's dad always telling her horror stories of when he was a teacher...

Tom met Phil at Dartford Grammar School (DGS), in the first year. Neither Phil nor Tom were very good at football or outdoor sports, so we both chose to spend most of our time indoors, often in the library. This was where we met, and soon became friends.

Tom is a big train fan too, and, upon finishing our time together at DGS, we went off around the country on a railtour - incorporating several of the routes that we are going to use on our honeymoon.

Tom has just finished a 6-year course at Robinson College, Cambridge University studying Vetinary medicine. He is now job-hunting! He wants to work in a "mixed practice", i.e. he wishes to give poorly cats injections one day and be outside placing thermometers into cows, well, you imagine how co-operative a cow would be if you put a thermometer in it's mouth...

Both Chris and John also went to DGS, but did not become good friends with Phil and Tom until a few years later. Our friendship mainly started when the school had it's first batch of general access computers installed, and we were allowed to use them during lunch. The four of us would regularly be inside on the computers, and so we became one larger group of friends.

Chris and John both have frighteningly similar histories. They both studied A-levels in physics, chemistry and double maths, (oh, and all four of us studied "general studies", for all that was worth!). They somehow managed to be in the same classes for all their A-levels, both got superb results, and were both promptly accepted into Oxford University, both to study Physics, although they did go to different colleges. Chris went to St Peters College and John went to St Anne's College.John graduated with a first and Chris with a 2:1

Not content with following each other through school and university, they both now work at the same IT security consultancy firm, Detica, based and living (not together!) in Guildford. However, to break the trend, John has just been re-located (by Detica) to work in Cheltenham, which suits him down to the ground. Why? Cheltenham is where his fianceé, Judith Lane, is living! They are getting married on 1st May 2004.

"The Four" - Myself, Tom, Chris and John

The four of us have remained good friends since leaving school, and go on a holiday together each year. The most recent was to stay in a holiday cottage in the Hope Valley, but previous holidays have seen a little more action, and always resulted in various injuries. Phil always seems to come off worst though...

We met Tony at Warwick Student Cinema, although we got to know him better when he (and us) had left and become one of the alumni. He studied Maths with computing at Warwick University. He then took a 3 month whirlwind tour of Australia, his homeland, visiting towns, relatives and the bush. He then came home and took his skills to Ford where he works at the moment as an IT consultant.

When Jo joined Revelation (rock-gospel choir), she realised that Tony had also been a member (for a few months in the summer of his third year) and is now involved in Revelation nationally as their photographer and web monkey. Tony is interested in mountain biking, photgraphy (obviously) and The Tube and is always full of interesting stories to entertain us with.

Please note: These pages are being deliberately left virtually as they were at the time of the wedding, to preserve the good website we put together at the time, for posterity more than anything else! Whilst we are endeavouring to keep links etc up to date, if replacements can't be easily found, the link will simply be removed. This is why some things may say they are links but are links no longer. Also, some of the information given here may, therefore, be out of date.

This page is part of Phil and Jo's online madhouse. The links below are what is in the madhouse - please look around.