marrying marlett

Zach and I had a few mutual friends from high school, but truly met the most embarrassing way possible. What started off as downloading the popular social media dating apps "tinder and bumble" for giggles with friends, ended up landing me my dream husband. The funniest part of it all is that I remember reading “bumble love stories” on the app when I first downloaded it and thought.... who actually meets their husband on a dating app? Well I guess we're in the 21st century because I'm now seeing this a lot lol... a true #bumblelovestory am i right??? We first matched on tinder and after a couple conversation exchanges, I never responded. About a month later, we matched again on bumble and Zach decided to shoot his second shot (literally) with a gif of Steph Curry making a half court shot with the caption “2nd times a charm, tinder didn’t work but i thought I’d shoot my shot on here”. We then exchanged snapchats for about 2 weeks before we finally met, and Zach landed the name of "bumble boy" amongst my dental hygiene friends at school. We had planned to casually meet up at Molly Malone’s one night when we were both out with friends on St. Pats day. I looked all night for Zach hoping I would run into him, later finding out Zach saw me and purposely hid from me because he knew he wanted to take me out on a date and make a better first impression. Well, Zach made a smart move because our first date went great, and the rest is history!

Our first date consisted of dinner and movies, a date night Zach and I continue to do to this day. Zach let me pick a restaurant to eat and he got to pick the movie. I picked Chuy’s (because I love mexican food) and Zach gladly agreed. I later found out this was one of his least favorite restaurants, but he put on a happy face anyways. The day of the date, it was pouring down raining all day and I almost canceled because I was so nervous. He picked me up at my parents house when the rain was pouring down and neither of us had an umbrella. He insisted he come to the door, but I insisted he stayed in the car and I would walk out to him. I stalled for about 5 minutes, pretending I was trying to find an umbrella but in reality I was staring in the mirror trying to talk myself up for the date and get enough nerves to walk outside. As soon as I stepped foot into the car, the conversation never stopped. Zach was the easiest person in the world to talk to and had me laughing the entire night. For dinner we split a burrito, but in reality we both had only 2 bites each and proceeded to claim we were full. Neither of us ate a thing because both of our nerves were flowing and we didn’t have the appetite to eat. Now we look back at this moment and laugh, because in reality Zach could have eaten that entire burrito plus another one before he was “full”. We went to xscape theatre and watched a scary movie called Strangers 2, but every couple of minutes I would look over to Zach smiling at me. The smile and butterflies I felt during that movie is still one of my favorite memories I have of Zach to this day. After the movie, Zach dropped me back off at my parents house and once we pulled into the driveway asked, “When's the next date?" We made arrangements to hangout the next day, and continued to hangout nearly every day from that point forward.

Zach proposed to me on Easter 2020 in the middle of a pandemic. Since Zach’s immediate family is very small, we were still able to celebrate a socially distant easter by having an “adult easter egg hunt” with Zach’s mom, his sister, her husband, and Rick. His mom hid the eggs around his sister's backyard and made sure that we all knew that there was 1 "EXTRA special gold egg” and whoever found that gold egg got a special surprise. As we were hunting for the egg, Zach’s mom secretly told me where the gold egg was and insisted I be the one to find it. I kept telling her that I refused to get the gold egg because I didn’t want to cheat with an unfair advantage. We sat there for 5 minutes standing in front of the gold egg as I continuously tried to push it off on someone else. Little did I know that egg was for me all along... and Rick had recorded the whole thing on camera. Zach finally grabbed the gold egg (visibly annoyed) knowing I would never accept it for myself at this point (lol...oops). Inside the gold egg was a $5 scratch-off lottery ticket. Zach let me scratch it off, and as I was midway through scratching the lottery ticket, my favorite song “The Blessing” came on over the bluetooth speaker. At the bottom of the scratch-off, I found 3 diamond ring symbols in a row (and to my shock- I had... won? that never happens??) As I started to scratch off what the prize was, in the box the phrase “Will you marry me?” appeared. I looked up in disbelief to see Zach kneeling, all of the girls blubbering, and my mom & dad bursting through the doors at Lindseys house (they had been watching through the window the whole time). It was the most perfect moment ever and Zach put so much thought into the proposal given the COVID circumstances. He even had my mom paint my nails with me a day prior (COVID had nail salons closed down) so that my fingers would be painted for the proposal lol. I was completely shocked and did not expect it at all... Easter 2020 was the best one yet!