My current status is very much happily married with our 2nd wedding anniversary is coming up next week.

I was, I thought, a happy..... well, maybe a little lonely, but not unhappy, bachelor working hard as an IT Tech in the day and doing pub and club gigs at night and weekends, I had been single for about seven years. Then one Saturday night I played a gig for a Phil/Brit couple who had recently married in Phils and were having a party for all their friends in this country who couldn't attend the wedding.

There were lots of Phil/Brit couples there and the way the Filipina wives seemed to look after their husbands needs, their warm and friendly nature and after talking to some of the husbands later on, I sort of decided, only in a sort of light hearted way that I might check out the web and see if I might find someone that would be interested in me.

I must say that at first I was really taken aback by the interest that was shown, but I had already decided that unless I found someone really suitable, I wouldn't bother moving ahead with any relationship.

Eventually, after chatting to maybe 20 or more different Filipinas, I met Louella and we hit it off right from the start because she was so different from most of the others. She wasn't at all heavy about things, asking things like, "are you really seriously looking for a wife" like most of the others and mostly, we just had a real good laugh.

Well, after only a month of chatting, I decided I would visit her and I had known her only for about 7 weeks online when I flew off to Manila to meet her. When I got there, she was just everything I expected her to be and by the end of my 2 week stay there, I had decided I would marry her if she'd have me.

That was in November 2005 and I went back to Phils in June 2006 for a month and did just that. She applied for her visa shortly afterwards and it was granted towards the end of August that year. Louella eventually arrived in the UK at the end of September 2006 and we will apply for ILR in late August this year.

We then applied for a visa for Louella's daughter Mary Grace and visited Phils in August last year to bring her back to live in the UK with us. Because our passports are likely to be tied up with the ILR process and of course the £750 cost of ILR, we won't be able to visit Phils this year, but I will be looking forward to going again next year.

Iain.