We are Claire and Pedro, and this is our story.
Claire is Filipina and used to live in Metro Manila, north of the Philippines. Pedro is Portuguese, and lives in Porto, north of Portugal.
Even if distance tried as much as possible to keep us from ever finding each other, we ended up meeting online. As we talked on the Internet and got to know each other better and better, we ended up falling in love!
As you can imagine, it was not easy… Being in love and so far away! We lived in opposite sides of the world. We could not do many of the things other couples take for granted, like going to the movies or going out together. The different time zones also made it difficult to reconcile our schedules, since daytime in Portugal is nighttime in the Philippines and vice-versa. For a while, we had to sacrifice our sleep to maintain constant communication. In addition, we could only be together in-person a few times a year, which required us to ask for vacations at work, arrange for visas, and pay for airline tickets and accommodations.
But we knew we wanted to be together. Pedro asked for Claire’s hand in marriage, and she accepted it. We decided then that we would live in Portugal and be married in Fatima — a very special place for both of us.
The bureaucracies, both civil and ecclesiastical, were very cumbersome, since there were two countries involved (Portugal and Philippines) and three dioceses (Fatima, Manila and Porto). Pedro needed to fly to the Philippines a few times, and Claire to Portugal as well, to collect and validate documents. Since there is no Portuguese embassy in the Philippines, there was a time when both of us needed to fly to Jakarta, Indonesia – the nearest Portuguese embassy. The delays were often considerable, and sometimes it seemed like we would not have everything ready for our set marriage date.
But after a lot of work and prayers, we achieved the wedding of our dreams on May 25, 2019. The path here has certainly been challenging. But we believe everything worthwhile must be achieved with effort.
Today we are married and happy to live together, in the knowledge that Love has no Borders! We now continue living an adventure of a lifetime, which we wish to share with you. We wish you an enjoyable reading of our website.
