Time to tie the knot!

Marietta College. Our home away from home. Zach was a grade younger than me, so we met his freshman year. Both of us were involved in choir and Greek Life on campus, and we were friendly but didn't really know each other that well. My friends and I spent a lot of time at his fraternity house throughout college, especially my senior year, so that was really the first year we hung out, but always with other people. In 2014, I graduated and moved to Chicago, and we didn't speak for over a year...

I received a really nice "happy birthday" text from a number I didn't recognize. After awkwardly saying thanks and asking who it was, I found out it was Zach. We texted back and forth and just caught up with each other that day, and the next, and the next... until next thing we knew, I was planning a visit to Clarksville, TN (where he was getting ready to start grad school) for a long weekend in September. We were both superrrr nervous, but obviously for no reason! The weekend went by too fast, and immediately after, we started planning the next visit. We did the long distance thing for about a year and decided that was long enough.

Zach brought his truck to Illinois and helped me load up all my things for the big journey down South. I got a job as a teacher in Clarksville, he was finishing up grad school, and we got really lucky with our house! His parents lived here before he was even born and had been renting their house for years. It was perfect timing for the two of us and his cat, Bruce Wayne, to be able to move in to that house! That October, we added Manny, our other cat to our little family, and in February of 2017, we added Little Man, our beagle to the household.

Zach and I went to Starbucks for breakfast and my Pumpkin Spice Latte, and then headed to a local pumpkin patch. While we were looking at pumpkins, he walked ahead of me a little bit, and yelled back, "What about this one?" When I got up to see the pumpkin, a ring was sitting on top of it! I asked what it was, and he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, and of course, I said yes! I then found out that he had hired a photographer to be there to capture the moment- how perfect is he?!

We lost Manny, one of our sweet furbabies, in July of 2017, but gained another, Sadie Lou, in October of 2017. Our original reception venue fell through and we found a new, better one that is more "us!" I left my job (and teaching) and found a new. Zach started teaching full-time and is loving it! We moved out of our first home and into our new home that we own! We've had a lot of changes through our long engagement, some very difficult. But planning our wedding to share our love with all of you definitely hasn't changed! ❤❤