lets get married

We were just 12 and 13 when we first met in our first class of high school. I can't remember us saying a single word to one another. I must have had him charmed though, because a year later, he asked our teacher to pair us up for a group project. Matchmaker Miss Stone must have seen straight through him, and thus, our 'OptiMinds' team and a wonderful friendship begun. Mady spent the first year of our friendship convinced I was in love with her best friend at the time (Shocking for her, I was only playing nice just to learn all of her secrets). She was pretty blindsided when asked her out and unfortunately for her, she said no. Didn’t matter, I was in it for the long game. I took it like a champ and we still stayed good friends. Then, after one more year, and one more OptiMinds, we were inseparable. Silly games with our group of friends always had to have a 1v1 part, we were on Skype every night, and we spent classes catching each other staring. How beautiful it was to fall in love with Zac piece by piece. As I learnt more and more about who he was in the years we were friends, I told him to try again, and he did. Oh yeah I did! It was finally my time to shine and I was going to pull out all of the stops that any 15 year old boy could. I planned the most beautiful picnic, complete with homemade cupcakes in her favourite colour (She didn’t even notice, and I told her about them a whole year later, I digress). We spent five hours wandering the park with rosy cheeks; two giddy 15 year olds, until time was up and Mady’s mum arrived to pick her up. I knew I was in when Tracy handed me a Buzz Bar. Mady didn't know that this was the start of the rest of our lives back then, but I did. Before we knew it, it was formal, graduation, uni, army, un-army, new big kid jobs, and suddenly, we weren't fifteen anymore. Then it was house hunting and dancing in our empty living room. Then a family trip to Christchurch, with two snowboards on a mountain and a ring secretly tucked into my jacket pocket. We blinked, and the back of our car was overflowing with three car seats, and repeated renditions of "Galumph went the little green frog". It wasn't very long ago that we were just two kids, and now, it's been eight beautiful years of growing up side-by-side. What an honour it is to marry the person who has loved me this sweetly through every version of ourselves as we grew together. Thank you for being a part of this chapter in our love story. We can't wait to see you on the 12th.