Three Mamamia readers on how they met their loves.

People travel far to look for love.

But sometimes the best love stories come from romances grown on home soil.

Sometimes your soul mate is sitting next to you in primary school, or they’re at your high school reunion.

People go far to find love, so it’s pretty amazing when you find it at home like these three women did. They captured us all with the #HomeGrownLove stories they shared with us here at Mamamia.

Just as an FYI, you should know that this post is sponsored by Love Beets Baby Beetroot. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100 per cent authentic and written in their own words.

Carly’s love story

We were looking through childhood photos when we found it. Proof that we’d known each other pretty much all of our lives.

My boyfriend Nick didn’t really have any school photos, so I was sitting with him, flicking through mine. We knew we’d gone to the same school, had a similar big group of buddies, and sort-of grown up close to each other. But until that day, sifting through memories, we didn’t know how close.

We’d actually been in the same class from grade 3 through grades 4, 5, and 6.

Seriously, there are just so many connections. We’d run into each other a lot. It was actually at a girlfriend’s 30th that we felt a bit of something more between us I think. Actually I’m going to say we ‘rekindled’ the romance, and let me tell you why.

This is the cheesy bit, so forgive me. For her birthday party, I’d brought my fire pit out so we could have an open fire to sit around, and Nick offered to help me set it up. While we were putting it all together, we just chatted away for ages, just he and I, and that’s when we rekindled it. Over the fire. He messaged me a week later and that’s when things really started.

All our friends didn’t really believe it to be honest, at first. There was this disbelief that we’d known each other for so many years, and hadn’t clicked until so many years later. I mean, we’re both 31 now, and that primary school photo was taken when we must have been 9. But ultimately everyone was just so happy for us.

So that’s my love story. That’s how I met Nick, and then met him again, and then met him again, and then finally got together.

Alex’s love story

This home-grown love story is worthy of being made into a rom-com.

23-year-old Alex gave birth to her first baby boy, Lachlan, just six weeks ago – and the story of how she met Lachlan’s father is better than any Mills and Boon romance.

12 years ago, Alex and Ryan sat next to each other in their grade six primary school class. She was 11, and he was 12. It was not, however, love at first sight.

“I thought he was a show off at first!” Alex says. “I remember he wouldn’t stop talking or fidgeting and it used to frustrate me since I had to sit next to him.”

“[When] he pulled me into one of the playgrounds at the school and told me he liked me and asked if I would be his girlfriend … I just remember thinking ‘but he’s so annoying’,” Alex laughs.

They did start dating after a few weeks, though – as happens in those halcyon days of youth. Unfortunately, the romance was cut short the next year, when Ryan moved away to the country.

Alex says that despite social media not being as advanced back then as it is now, they managed to keep in touch.

“After a few years we found each other on MySpace, then followed through to Facebook,” Alex says.

They fell out of touch for a few years – and then when Alex was 21, and Ryan was 22, they bumped into each other at the pub entirely by chance. According to Alex the “chemistry was almost instant”.

They exchanged numbers, and that same night they talked on the phone for hours and hours.

Despite living a fair distance apart still, the couple made an effort to spend as much time together as possible – and fell for each other fast.

Now, with their new bub Lachlan, they are blissfully happy.

Alex says that, “Life couldn’t be more perfect.”

Lucy’s love story

Lucy’s schoolgirl crush grew up in the US, 12,000 kilometres away from her – so it’s no surprise the pair took almost ten years to get together.

But when they did finally make it official, here on Aussie soil, she and her boyfriend Charlie certainly made up for lost time in the romance stakes.

Lucy, a 25 year old travel industry professional, first met Charlie, 30, when she was just a teenager and Charlie was visiting Sydney as a backpacker.

The two kept in touch online when Charlie returned home, with teenaged Lucy often agonising over the wording of her emails to her older crush.

The painstakingly-drafted email exchange continued sporadically for eight years — until Charlie finally decided to return to Australia.

Lucy says she was, “the biggest grinning idiot going around” when she heard of his plans to return last year.

Luckily for loved-up Lucy, Charlie realised there was, “instant chemistry that went both ways” between the two.

The two maintained an international romance for almost a year – with Charlie at one point turning up on my doorstep as a romantic surprise — before Lucy packed her bags and boarded a plane to join him in the US.

And next up?

Home-grown Lucy and her American love plan to pack their bags again and move somewhere new to them both.

What’s your home grown love story?

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