For Precilla Reijke and Rainel Woerdings, family is everything. Being a part of each other’s lives for the past 30 years, the pair have lived through births, loss and a myriad of major milestones. Now the pair are taking on another challenge: marriage.
Though based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the couple decided to come back to the site of their healing after the loss of their son Zosar to tie the knot in a most unconventional way. Precilla and Rainel were one of 19 couples that got married at the MSW Mass Wedding at the Hope Botanical Gardens on Friday. Unlike many of the other couples, this cross-continental has a storied past spanning three decades and two countries.
First meeting in 1992, Precilla said he was the first boy that she had to look at twice. While he enticed all her youthful sensibilities, Rainel said at 14 years old he thought she was the most beautiful girl in all of Suriname. Quickly becoming pen pals the two sent letters from Suriname to The Netherlands, keeping each other updated on their lives.
Rainel kept Precilla updated when he became a father in his late teens, career moves he was making and everything she would need to feel close to him with an ocean between them. Seven years after their initial meeting Rainel returned to Suriname and laid eyes on her once again. “That was the first time we saw each other again but we were both in a relationship so we were respectful of it,” Precilla recalled.
‘The time of my life’ Three years later the pair.
