Amanda Byram has opened up about cancelling her 2011 wedding to former rugby player Craig McMullen.
Before falling head over heels for her husband Julian Okines, the TV presenter was engaged to wed Craig – but Amanda called the wedding off just one month before their big day.
Speaking about that time in her life, Amanda told Independent Style, “I cancelled a wedding, it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done my life, I hurt him and let people down.”
“I was 38 at that point, I didn’t have children, I had never married and I had all these emotions whishing through my head,” she said.
“At the time when he proposed, when we were together, I was very happy but I think I was really searching for companionship. I was successful in my career and happy in my life… I was at a place at 36 where I thought, ‘It’s maybe time to meet a guy’.
Although Amanda described their time together as “fantastic”, Amanda knew something wasn’t right.
“I got so caught up in the flowers and dress, the wedding was in the South of France and people were flying in from America, Australia, I had friends from LA coming over. It was going to be a four day affair – the most beautiful day, picture perfect event with 45 people.
“Something struck me a month and a half before the wedding and it’s very hard to put into words. I just thought I wasn’t sure.”
“I thought, ‘it doesn’t make sense that I’m not sure – here is a great guy who is kind, caring, loving, intelligent, he would be a great father and husband, but there was something in my heart. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Amanda then looked to her parents Betty and Denny for advice just weeks before the wedding, and they encouraged her to go with her gut.
“I said it to my mum and dad, and they said, ‘You know what, it’s a long time if you’re in an unhappy marriage’.
“I remember when I was a kid, the first time when I was in college in third year, I was unhappy because I wanted to take a different subject and focus on photography, but they wouldn’t let me. I thought that was it: you’re born, go to school, get married and die, that’s the way of the world.”
“They said, ‘If you’re unhappy, walk away’. That was a huge pivot and made me do what I do. I thought, ‘I can do whatever I want, my parents are so supportive, which brings me to this moment.
“They said, ‘You don’t have to do anything, it’s only money. If anyone complains then they’re not your friends’.”
Despite calling off the wedding, Amanda and Craig stayed together – but eventually split in January 2012.
“It was so impactive on me – it was a really difficult time, I went through a really bad patch.
“I was quite low for six months after. We stayed together, but I just wasn’t happy. It turned me into a completely different person. I became brave, empowered and strong. Sometimes you have to do things to help yourself and not others.”
At the time, people suggested that she should have gone through with the wedding and divorced him later, but now, women praise her for her decision.
|When I speak to women about it, they say, ‘oh Christ, if only I listened to my heart on my wedding day’. It’s something that should be talked about more. I mistakenly thought I wanted something – I was seeking something that everybody else had. I wanted the guy, the nice guy, but I was settling.”
After months of feeling low, Amanda soon realised that she did the right thing, and after three years of being single and learning to love her own company, she decided that she was ready to find love again.
“I got to a point where I thought I’m ready to meet someone,” she said. “I really think I was very lucky that I got the chance in my late 30s early 40s to get to know myself. And you know what? I’m not with someone because I’m lonely or desperate or feel like it’s time; I’m not settling and if that means being alone, so be it.
“And that’s when I met my husband.”
Amanda met Julian Okines in 2014, and the happy couple wed in London in 2016.
“In years gone past, I would have been afraid that something would go wrong, I was very cautious about guys – before I’d done all that self-help.
“If I met a guy who I thought was the one, I would act a certain way around them, but I was so totally relaxed and not needing to impress him, I thought, ‘If you don’t like me, I’ve got myself’.
“I was going on a trip to Italy with mum to Puglia – at this stage, I was single for a solid year, it was three years in total, but one year since I touched a man – I said to my mum, ‘I met this cute guy and we really hit it off. Will I ask him to come to Italy with me? Is he going to think I’m too full on?’
“And he said it was one of the things made him fall for me: there was no bulls**t, he said, ‘you weren’t wrapped in your own head’.
“That was really it, then our relationship blossomed. I was in a place where I knew if it doesn’t work out, so what? Prior to that, I cared so much about what if what if I messed it up, but because of what I’d been through, I was so comfortable with myself and my decisions. It’s truly why we’ve lasted the test of time,” she added.
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