Love Lifts Her Up! Loren's Big Roman

Height is no obstacle for this couple

Not long ago, Loren Savage stood on her bed and gave her strapping new husband Mark a hug. “My head was up to his chest, but it felt like we were the same height,” she smiles.

“I said, ‘Do you wish I was this tall?’ and he said, ‘No, you take up enough room in the bed!’”

Loren and Mark met four years ago. They married last April in front of 90 family and friends at Te Puna Quarry Gardens in the foothills of the Kaimai Ranges in the Bay of Plenty.

“I always thought, ‘Imagine finding someone brave enough to marry me,’” laughs Loren, 25, who works in a communications and administration role in the Ministry of Social Development’s Hamilton office.

“I tell people I only married Mark so he could help me get things off the top shelf at the supermarket and I even referred to him in my wedding speech as ‘conveniently tall’!”

“It’s something we joke about,” adds Mark. “I love the humour Loren brings into our relationship.”

Mark, a 24-year-old web developer, is a towering 1.88 metres, while Loren is 1.32m.

Despite having average height parents and an average height big sister, Loren was born with one of the most common forms of dwarfism, achondroplasia. The gene mutation can be inherited from one or both parents, or spontaneous, as it was for Loren.

“Yes, I have a disability, but I don’t think it disables me and I’m not defined by it,” she declares. “I see it as a gift. I’ve had opportunities in my life and met people along the way I wouldn’t have if I had been born average height.”