She’s here! Marry Me Ink’s blogging bride of 2015 – Miss Jo Black! I’m a regular follower of @missjoblacktattoos and one day, I saw the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen appear in my feed. That’s where it all started. I contacted Jo and got her to enter her engagement story and Pinterest board to be Marry Me Ink’s new blogging bride. I’m SO glad she did – Jo and her fiance Leigh are due to get married at the end of the year with the most awesome theme I’ve heard of. This is where I now hand you over to Jo..
I guess this is my hello to the world of internet blogs and my first post as a “Blogging Bride” for the lovely folk at Marry Me Ink!
So… I’m Jo Black, or JoJo to my fiancé Leigh, I own and tattoo at a studio called Black Inc. Tattoo in the sleepy countryside town of Frome, Somerset… and that is exactly where and how we met.
Leigh, my bearded babe, came into my studio on a sunny morning with his son Finn to book himself in for a large tattoo on his back. He must have prepped Finn for their visit to impress me and the other ladies in he shop because Finn repeatedly told Leigh how much he loved him and what a great dad he is… come on what woman doesn’t melt when they know a man is a good dad! But anyway, after some time chatting about what he wanted and where, he and Finn went for a wander around Frome, when he left me and the other girls in the shop Alison and Neko joked that he was gorgeous and one of us could end up marrying him, I believe Neko’s words were “He’s RED HOT”. A while later I went to get a round of coffee for the shop I noticed them waiting in line for milkshakes, I went over and chatted some more… And that’s where it all began.
For the next couple of weeks leading up to his tattoo we spoke almost every day, joking and chatting via text and Instagram. When the weekend of the tattoo loomed we had come to the decision that we just wanted to spend a bit of time together and instead of doing the tattoo we went to the Frome World Food Festival and ate and drank and fell in love! It took me almost a year to actually get round to tattooing him at all and still to this day we haven’t done the one he booked back then!
Two years on and Leigh and I are living together in a flat in Frome, with our dogs Spike and Bobbie and more in love than ever. My family adore him, and would probably rather spend time with him than me! And I adore his family too, he has rather a lot of family!
So, with being so happy and on track, when we went to watch Funeral For a Friend play in the local venue just before Christmas 2014 and he started acting very strangely, ducking out here and there, whispering to people, taking phone calls and texts in private… I started to think something was up… I actually said to a friend that evening ‘I reckon he wants me to think he’s going to propose tonight and then he won’t do it’. That friend, who knew what was going on, laughed at me.
Then, during their last song, Matt, the singer from Funeral For A Friend, stopped the band, announced that their last song (History, my favourite track) was dedicated to Miss Jo Black, the stage lights found me and Leigh in the crowd and Matt said “I think your boyfriend wants to ask you something”… As I turned around Leigh was on one knee with the most incredible ring and the look of a terrified lamb about to go to the slaughter house… OF COURSE I SAID YES! And FFAF launched into the track as I did. The bugger had arranged the whole thing behind my back and I burst into tears!
In the light I could see that my ring was the most amazing labradorite and black diamonds on oxidised silver, engraved inside with the words “GOTH WIFE” made by the incredibly talented Penelope from The Flying Fox Art and Design. The boy did good! SO GOOD!
And from there I have run full pelt into arranging the vintage circus themed, country style wedding we are planning… Which I will be blogging about in great detail in the coming months… Watch this space!
