You Won’t Believe What These Newlyweds Found In A Box Of Childhood Photos

English newlyweds Aimee Maiden and Nick Wheeler got married on Saturday after getting engaged last year. The happy couple met in 2005 and have been inseparable ever since, but shortly after telling their families about their engagement, they were flipping through a batch of Nick’s old family photos when they came across something stunning — something that almost makes their marriage seem somehow cosmically meant to be.

Maiden is now 25 and a schoolteacher. Wheeler is 26 and a soldier in the British army. They met at college in Truro, England, and knew very quickly that they were soul mates. But what they didn’t know until they saw that grainy old photo was that these newlyweds had met before, as little kids, 11 years before they met for real.

The photo above was taken on the same beach, at Mousehole, Cornwall, as this one snapped by Nick’s grandfather in 1994.

That’s Nick in the foreground. And the smiling little girls circled in the background — that’s Aimee.

The amazing coincidence — if in fact it was a coincidence — stunned the young couple. At their engagement party, they put the photo on display for all of their families and friends.

“The photo was taken by Nick’s grandad. Nick is sitting front right in the boat with his sister and two cousins and his family, his mum, uncle and nan are to the right and behind them,” Aimee told the Kent Online news site. “What makes it even more significant was that, although I was brought up in Mousehole, Nick and his family didn’t even live in Cornwall at the time. He and his family were down on holiday from Kent and didn’t move down permanently to Newlyn until a year later.”

For the photo at the top of this article, the couple returned to the same spot on that same beach.

The church where they were married on Saturday is just a short drive from the Mousehole beach, as well.

While the couple-to-be didn’t exactly meet that day 20 years ago — neither they nor their families were acquainted at all and have no recollection of speaking to one another — clearly that beach occupies a special place in the couple’s story, especially because, with Nick in the military, they don’t get to spend as much time together as most newlyweds.

The couple is now on their honeymoon in Florida. As soon as they get back, Nick will be sent to Canada, and the newlyweds who seem destined to be together will be apart for another 10 weeks.