Wedding planning has been a wild ride! Chris and I were supposed to get married on May 16, 2020, & then postponed to December 5 due to COVID. As COVID numbers continue to increase, we have decided that we cannot put our family and friends at risk by holding a traditional wedding ceremony. Instead, we will be getting married in Hawaii with just our parents on May 17, 2021, which is almost a year to the day of our original wedding date. Then, we will celebrate with everyone at our reception on August 7 in Oxford, Mississippi! We look forward to celebrating with you on August 7, and YES... #SmithHappensInOxford (eventually). Please peruse our website to read more about these changes!

A few weeks before I met Chris, I went on a date with another guy and thought went well...until I got ghosted. On this ghost-date, I was given a dinosaur soup ladle that I had pointed out in passing, so I was really surprised when this date disappeared. Although I wanted to throw out this silly little dinosaur, I couldn't bring myself to do it and told myself that this dinosaur was going to be my little reminder to wait for a guy who made me feel safe, respected, and able to be myself. To quit trying to force things and to let things happen naturally. Fast forward a few weeks, and I went out to celebrate my 26th birthday with some of my friends. One by one, the crowd began to thin, and eventually the remaining crew ended up at the 90s bar in Athens, Georgia. As my friends and I people-watched and danced to one-too-many Whitney Houston songs, I noticed a cute guy wearing a Carolina hat. Intrigued by his Carolina drawl and his knowledge of every Nelly song in existence, I knew I had to strike up a conversation and some awkward dance moves. We spent the next three hours chatting away, and when I asked him what he did for a living, he told me that he studied dinosaurs. I thought about that little dinosaur soup ladle sitting on my kitchen counter and eagerly said yes when he asked if he could take me on a "real date" at Longhorn. We've been inseparable ever since.

I knew pretty early into dating Samra that I wanted to ask her to marry me. When Samra was invited to present at a student affairs conference in Los Angeles, she invited me to join her and suggested that we take a side trip afterwards to Disneyland. Since we both love Disney, this seemed like the perfect place to propose. I asked Samra's dad for her hand when I joined Samra and her family for the first part of the Christmas holidays. On our first night in Oxford, I gave Samra her Christmas present early and accidentally made her parents think that I was proposing right then without having asked them--it was a pair of earrings in a ring-sized box. Samra's parents gasped and I immediately had to exclaim, "It's not what you think it is. Not yet, anyway." Given that, I didn't think that I would ever get a chance to ask Matt without Samra around, but thankfully, Samra and her mom decided to do some Christmas shopping and left us in the car. Honestly, I don't remember much of what either of us said, because I was nervous and it was kind of a blur, but I do remember a yes somewhere in there. Three months later, on our final night in Disneyland, Samra and I had a romantic dinner at the Blue Bayou restaurant in Disneyland. Nestled on the water with boats passing by, we enjoyed steak and lobster, and then Disney cast members brought a dessert that had "Will you marry me?" written on the plate in chocolate. It took Samra a few seconds to register what was happening, and when she looked up, she saw that I was on one knee. Afterwards, the staff at Blue Bayou brought a bottle of sparkling juice and gave us front-row seats to the Fantasmic lights and fireworks show. Samra swears that's the first and only time in her life that she's been rendered speechless.