I stared at the screen as the doctor turned to Vittoria and said: "Dica a papáche é una bimba ." But she didn't need to. I'd already understood enough to realise the ultrasound was showing a baby girl. Not for the first time, the tears welled up. I cried as I saw her walk towards me down the aisle, once more when friends and family left for England that night, and finally now, looking at a screen finding out that my first child will be a little girl.

This time last year, the only thing that drove me to tears was watching Derby County play football, which incidentally was the closest I ever thought I'd come to a long-distance love affair, what with living in Sevenoaks and commuting every other weekend. However, no-frills flying changed all that.

Eighteen months ago, when I was features editor for the esteemed furniture trade journal Cabinet Maker, I came across Vittoria, who was working for a sofa manufacturer in southern Italy. I was over there on a PR schmooze. We'd met fleetingly at a furniture fair in April, but this was the first time we had the opportunity to speak at length.

A week later, I emailed, but it wasn't until October that things started to develop. Periodic emails became lengthy office phone conversations, which then became lengthy phone conversations at home. Eventually, with neither of us knowing quite where we stood, she came over. She flew, from Bari on the Adriatic coast, to Heathrow, via Milan with Alitalia at a cost of some £800. After a nervous hour or so, with me trying hard to hide an ugly and rather untimely cold sore on my lip, the ice was broken, and we started to do all the things that usually happen on first dates. Although I guess £800 is a pretty expensive first date, and if we'd carried on at that price, then our first date would also have been our last.

As she left for Italy on the Monday morning, I knew I had a problem. I liked her, and was pretty sure feelings were mutual. But wages at furniture trade magazines are, well, pretty much what you would expect, so a prompt return visit was looking unlikely. Phone calls and internet searches of the main airlines did little to lift spirits. Enter Ryanair. Pescara is a small town, famous for very little other than its fish, so it was hard to fathom why Ryanair has a daily flight there from Stansted, but I'm glad it does. For me, the best thing about Pescara is that it's only three hours from Bari by train, which made it just about the most attractive Italian city short of Bari itself. It's also just two hours from Rome.

I found a £50 return to Italy, which seemed too good to be true, but I went ahead and booked anyway. Two weeks later, I was on my way.

That first flight to Pescara was last November, and since then I have flown on the mid-morning flight to Pescara every other weekend. It's not always that cheap. Just after Christmas, I took a flight at two days' notice and paid more than £200 - a more standard fare for a return flight to Italy. But that proved the exception. One flight cost me £10 each way, leaving the £30 return train fare from Sevenoaks on the Stansted Express the most expensive part of the journey.

I had done a lot of business flying over the past three years, mainly with mainstream carriers. But it's hard to see why they charge so much more than the no-frills carriers. OK, so the food isn't free, there are often no seat reservations, and they aren't as well-established, but there is little to tell between them. All most people want is to get there on time and in comfort. The budget airlines win hands down. I've never been more than an hour late on a no-frills flight, although this may be because they often fly to more obscure, and therefore less busy, airports.

Still, despite all the fun I was having getting up at 4am every other Friday to catch the plane, it had to end eventually. By the start of this year, my feelings for Vic were clear to me. I bought the diamond ring, got down on one knee, and asked her to make an honest man of me. We decided to settle in Italy.

With preparations for the wedding getting close, I needed to make more frequent trips. The priest, a delightful man in his 90s, wanted to meet regularly before he would sanction the wedding. I don't think it ever occurred to him that I had to travel from England to meet him.

So, after taking about 60 budget flights in the past year, it was with some pleasure that I read that yet more routes and no frills airlines are being launched. Although my heart says otherwise, it's difficult to believe my life wouldn't be very different right now had they not existed.