Samkelo and  proved that you can have your special day without breaking the bank.

“From the first day I met her I told her that I will marry her and she didn’t believe me. She thought I was just another guy toying with her. But I kept telling her that,” he tells Move!.

Samkelo says life was no walk in the park for him as he was forced by financial circumstances to drop out of college and find some sort of income. Luckily for him, in 2016 he found a learnership that paid him R2 600. But it wasn’t enough to cover all his living expenses. At the time, Latoya was still a college student depending on her parents for financial support. Latoya used to help him with whatever little she was getting from her parents.

The couple from Vereeniging did not spend much on their wedding. “Nothing hurts like having a flashy wedding for a day and living with debt for the next three to five years,” said Samkelo.

He said there were a lot of people who wanted to get married but couldn’t because they were always thinking of what people would say.

Sam was hired on a permanent basis at the company he was doing his learnership. “After getting a permanent post as a Quality Inspector, I started saving because I was not used to the increased money and put R500 away every month.”

“I then asked my parents to go ask for her hand in marriage in Limpopo. Her family appreciated that I came, and she was not pregnant at that time. Things went well.  On the 9th of December we went to church for an engagement little celebration. Our families were both there and the pastor blessed us. We wore rings on that day and they both didn’t cost us more than R2 000,” he says.

They then went to make things official at Home Affairs where they paid R55 for a marriage certificate and R20 to release it.