By Daviot Kelly, Staff Reporter
PERHAPS BEING a soldier in her majesty's army gave Steve Saunders great determination. He needed it to find his future wife.
Steve (now 43), was a sergeant major in the British Army and came to Jamaica in 1998 to train with the Jamaican soldiers at Up Park Camp. On a stopover at the Liguanea Club in New Kingston, a waitress named Althea Hylton (now 35) caught his eyes. Not even his military training could have helped him dodge Cupid's arrow.
Admittedly, Althea was not receptive to his initial efforts. "At first I wasn't sure about him. He was a soldier and (I thought) they're always 'girly-girly. He asked me out five times." All answers of course, were in the negative.
But Steve was undeterred and he solicited the help of a driver who knew Althea's address in downtown Kingston. So, on Althea's day off, Steve made his way down there (still wearing his uniform) and knocked on her door. "You're not going to get rid of me that easily", he recalls saying. In an effort to get rid of him , she decided to go out with him.
"From that time we would talk and talk and got to know each other," says Althea. These other dates led to friendship and then on Mother's Day in 1999, he proposed. This time, there was no hesitation on her part. But because of Steve's duties, they postponed their nuptials. They remembered a hotel on the north coast where they stayed once and sought to find it for their wedding.
Their five-year fairytale courtship (and two-year search for the hotel) ended on Friday, August 23, when they wedded at Jamaica Inn Hotel in Ocho Rios. They said their "I do's" under an arch of flowers on the lawns with the sea mere steps away. The gentle lapping of the waves and the slowly setting sun provided a beautiful canvas on which this masterpiece of love was painted. Reverend Nydell Mullings performed the ceremony.
Terri Orane, Assistant Manager of Sales and Marketing at Jamaica Inn, said that usually the hotel does not cater for weddings where most of the guests are not staying at the hotel. But after hearing their story, and the fact that they had been looking for the hotel for two years, she had to cede.
The couple reside in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro. Steve has left the army but works in helping to clear land mines which still remain after the war. But for this union, five years in the making, land mines shouldn't be a problem.
