Maddison and Sam’s romance on the high seas story!

When young couple Maddison Moses and Sam Brisby announced their wedding plans after meeting four years ago as teenagers on P&O Cruises Australia’s Pacific Dawn, they had no idea their good news would inspire an amazing social media wave of best wishes from fellow cruisers sharing their joy. A post on the P&O Facebook page featuring Maddison and Sam led to the biggest response to an individual post for the past 12 months and a response more often seen with major ship dry dock refurbishments and itinerary program releases.
In little more than 24 hours, the ultimate feel-good post had reached more than a quarter of a million P&O followers, inspired numerous shares, attracted more than 5000 ‘likes’ and resulted in more than 700 comments. Many of the comments were from other couples, young and older, wanting to share the good news that they too had found their life partners on a P&O cruise.
Maddison and Sam’s only regret is that due to the cruising pause they can’t have their April wedding onboard a P&O ship.
In 2018, Maddison and Sam’s families, from the NSW Central Coast and Taree respectively, were unknown to each other as they travelled to Brisbane to cruise on Pacific Dawn.
Once onboard, the teenagers met and spent hours enjoying activities in the kids club and each other’s company. And when the cruise was over, Maddison and Sam stayed in touch travelling by rail to visit each other — a five-hour trip each way.
After obtaining their driving licences, they found a more convenient way to keep the friendship and the romance blooming.
“Both of our families randomly decided to go on a cruise,” said Maddison, who is a childcare educator.
adding, “When we got on the ship, we kind of checked each other out and kept on walking”, and “A couple of days later we bumped into each other and exchanged a couple of words”…“And then later when we met in the kids club and actually spoke to each other, we really hit it off.”
Maddison loved Gatsby Night onboard Pacific Dawn so much that, with cruises on pause, she recreated the onboard theme night at home for her eighteenth birthday.
Maddison and Sam are a highly motivated young couple who are going places, with Sam having made the switch from carpentry to real estate and the couple already have their eyes on a house they want to buy, and by all indications, cruising is going to figure prominently in their life story.
“We definitely want to go on cruises,” Maddison said. “We absolutely love cruising and so does my family” and “We can’t wait to go on another.”
Edited by John Alwyn-Jones, Cruise Editor