Marriage: Coming Soon!

We first met in 2010 as new students at the NC School of Science and Mathematics (Smath!) - but despite our shared love of biology, we didn't meet in any science class. We met in a theater workshop. During a nighttime workshop early on, we were instantly drawn to each other's vibrance and absurdity on stage and an instant sense of respect and mutual admiration was built. It would be two years before we started dating, but only two months before we were cast-mates in a show and two days before we were quick friends. FUN FACT: The NCSSM teacher for that theater workshop, Adam Sampieri (Sampy) has remained a dear friend and will be the person officiating our ceremony. He orchestrated our beginning, so he gets first dibs.

We started officially dating in April 2012 - only a few months before our high school graduation and before we would go off to college on opposite coasts: Maddy to Oregon State and Zack to Duke. But we were committed to making it work, and we blew every dime we had in our first year together on plane tickets and bus rides and every method of transport imaginable to get to each other whenever we could. Fast forward one year - Maddy made the decision to transfer to Duke - a school she had always eyed, well before Zack chose it. From there on out, we were inseparable. We jumped back into theater together (shout out to our 'troupe' Hoof 'n' Horn), we joined the same student living group (Ubuntu), we co-led clubs and events, we majored in the same things (Global Health and Cultural Anthropology), we traveled together (working with WISER in Kenya), we studied abroad together (IHP in Vietnam, South Africa, and Argentina), and at the end of it all, we wrote our theses on similar topics in the same region. It only made sense that somewhere in there, we became actual college roommates, too. Not "we moved in together off campus" - we were literally Duke roommates (thank you, gender-neutral housing options). Of course, we couldn't do literally the same things forever. In the 5+ years since we've graduated, we've taken on different jobs and different volunteer opportunities. Maddy got her Master's in Public Health while Zack took on extra experiences in Nonprofit Management. And eventually, we moved to an entirely new hub: Washington, DC - our new home. But some things haven't changed at all. Over the nearly 10 years we've been together, we've become the ultimate teammates - always in each other's corner, each of us always in awe, each of us happy to have a true partner.

We knew from the jump that we didn't want our engagement to be a surprise - we wanted it to be collaborative. After all, we had done everything else together, why wouldn't we take this next step jointly, too? So we both got engagement rings (beautiful, hand-crafted rings made by a NYC cabbie-turned-small town jeweler in Carrboro, NC - check them out at their storefront Rings True!). We knew what our rings would look like ahead of time, because we gave each other design input. We knew when and where we'd get engaged - December 2019, during our long awaited vacation to Maui. And from there it was simple. We took some time apart in Maui to write out what we wanted to say to one another. We picked a beautiful morning. We picked a beautiful, secluded beach - not unlike some of the beach moments we had when we were first dating near Maddy's home in the Outer Banks. And we sat down and talked about what we meant to one another. We put the rings on for the first time - and so began the long, fun period of us getting to use the word "fiancee" - which is wonderfully fancy.