"We’d lost a big part of our lives." Why Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth tied the knot.

Ten years after Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth met on the set of The Last Song, they got married.

The time in between featured red carpet appearances, rumours, songs, an engagement (and then another), a break up, a reunion, splitting time between Australia and the US, and a house fire. It’s a lot.

After a decade of love, heartbreak, emotion and public scrutiny, the fire was a devastating loss that convinced the couple it was time to get married.

Last November, their Malibu home was reduced to ash and rubble by wildfires that raged through California.

Their decision to marry in late December as they picked up the pieces left behind by the fire raised some eyebrows, but Liam told GQ it was this tragedy that prompted them to make the commitment.

 

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A post shared by Miley Cyrus (@mileycyrus) on Feb 14, 2019 at 12:55pm PST

“It doesn’t change the relationship, it’s a more connected, deeper version of your relationship before you got married. But it’s still the same thing,” he told GQ.

“I was 18 when I met Miley. We really fell in love quickly and had a really strong connection from the beginning and I think in the back of my head I knew it was on the cards, but we weren’t planning to have a wedding anytime soon.”

But then the fire happened.

“Then just going through something this emotional with someone, it brings you closer and we felt like we’d lost a big part of our lives, so we wanted to make a new part of our lives. It was something really good coming out of a horrible situation. It was going to happen eventually, but I think this just sped it up a little bit.”

Miley and Liam met on the set of The Last Song (a.k.a your second favourite Nicholas Spark movie) in 2009, and become engaged in 2012 when Miley was only 19. At the time, she was the daughter of iconic singer Billy Ray Cyrus and an established Disney star wanting to update her ‘child’ persona, whilst Liam was just beginning his Hollywood career. They were at two very different points in their lives.

The couple survived an 'on-again/off-again' period in 2010 and were steady throughout 2011 and 2012.

You may recall Miley's infamous onstage twerking with Robin Thicke, at the MTV Music Awards in 2013 - an incident which it now seems led to the beginning of the end of the pair’s first engagement. Only a month later, Miley announced she and Liam had called it off.

The couple stayed apart for three years, until they reconciled in 2016. At that time, they both discussed what went wrong in 2013.

Miley told radio personality Howard Stern she needed time and space to grow up.

"I don’t like when relationships are two halves trying to make a whole," she said. "You get time to be yourself. You get time to grow up. I think if you’re growing up attached to another person, you never really get solid as your own being."

Liam told GQ Australia the break-up was hard, but necessary.

"At the time we were going in different directions and it’s just what needed to happen. We were both super young and it was a good decision at the time - we both needed that."

Following their reconciliation, Miley released Malibu in May 2017, a song she wrote to claim back the narrative about her relationship with Liam.

"They’re going to talk about me if I come out of a restaurant with Liam. So why not put the power back in my relationship and say, ‘This is how I feel’?" she told Billboard.

 

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10 year challenge

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Miley said they had to "refall for each other" when they got back together.

And they did, but that didn't mean they were in a rush to get married. The opposite, in fact.

In September 2017, Miley said she had no wedding plans: "I don't envision marriage. I'm 24... I have too much living to do."

14 months later, the fire happened and their home was lost. Liam shared the bad news about their home in a photo on Instagram, showing ash and rubble with the word 'LOVE'.

 

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A post shared by Liam Hemsworth (@liamhemsworth) on Nov 13, 2018 at 8:31am PST

That word spoke volumes.

A month later, Miley and Liam married.

The musician and actor tied the knot in a small, casual ceremony on December 23, more than six years after they first became engaged.

Given what these two have endured together we predict a long and happy marriage.