i'm getting married in the mor-ninnnnn!

sometimes its your wedding day and you wake up wiiiiide awake at 5 in the morning because you can't sleep a second longer. it's christmas in july people! i feel just like i did when i was a kid waiting for santa claus to come, waking up every few hours to check if he came by with presents yet. perfect time to ramble and write, right??

i've been meaning to write down the story of how zach and i met and started to date, because i know i love reading how other couples met. plus we get married, you know, TODAY (what is life right now people) so this post is a little overdue, don't ya think? and it's my favorite story to tell. i'm going to warn you right now, this post is sponsored by three parts sleepiness and one part bachelorette party sugar and caffeination. it'll be rambling meesh style and i already regret nothing!!

rewind back to the beginning of january of this year:

after i got back from the DR, my tentative plan was to move down to AZ for a bit to spend time with family there and maybe work for a little to save up some money. and then i was going to move out to washington, dc to try my hand at living on the east coast since i'd wanted to for SO long! i was very much ready to continue living my life how i wanted to, throw caution to the wind, and do my grown up thang! plus i also had my best friends living out there and family close by, so i had lifelines in case everything went to crap haha. that's the yin and the yang of michelle in living form: half spontaneous, half super careful/logical.

back on track: it's my first sunday in my singles ward in AZ (i realize this is already starting off as the most cliche sounding story, just live in the moment with me!). i was walking down the hallway with macie from the DR (reunited in AZ!) looking for the bathroom. and i had just finished talking to someone in the bishopric telling them i had graduated from byu. so, we're walking and this guy in front of me (zach) whips around and says, "did you say you went to byu?" and i'm like "yep...hi random guy?" haha. and he asks if i ever lived at old academy while i was there, which i did for a year. and then he asks if my bishop had been bishop thorne, which he was for half of the time i was there. at this point i'm starting to think, "dear stranger, how do you know my life?". finally zach says "man, i knew i recognized you! my dad was in that bishopric and i was in that ward for a few months one summer" (this is classic zach by the way, making connections with people everywhere he goes). and i'm like "ooohhh, cool!" but secretly still not knowing or recognizing this kid at all haha, oops? he introduces himself real quick, points me to the bathroom (a good samaritan) and we part ways.
he friend requested me a little while later, which i accepted. later that night, there was a fireside that i was going to with macie. on our way, i saw that i had a facebook message from zach asking if we wanted to come over to his house to watch the fireside. we were basically almost at the building, so i just told him thanks but no thanks. but then he asks me if we want to come over after the fireside for a game night/dessert night. and i'm thinking "dang, this guy is persistent!" haha. i wanted to go, but i was babysitting early for my sister lori the next morning so again, i told him thanks but no thanks. after that, we started pretty casually texting over the next few days, and i think he invited me over again for a movie night. but i had some family stuff and had to turn him down AGAIN, yikes! i felt pretty bad because he seemed like a fun guy.

my sister lori would catch me texting him, tease me, and joke "watch, you're gonna end up marrying this guy!" and i would just roll my eyes, because i didn't even know him that well. annnnd remember, i had my plan and i was once and for all in control of my life. i wasn't planning on budging for anyone! even with this mindset, i still did eventually agree to go hiking with him that weekend once my family stuff cleared up, because i told myself what was the harm in going on a hike? obviously that's a load of crap and i definitely was so nervous! i remember talking to my friend chelsea a day before and my sister the night before about him and telling them i thought he seemed cool, but i just didn't want to date anybody before i left. i didn't want to let it go anyyyywhere, so we resolved to not let it be a date and to not let him pay for me.

well we started the date off getting acai bowls, and i let him pay for me. so yep, i failed right off the bat! in my defense, my plan was accidentally shut down because i could tell i liked this guy. i remember thinking, "i'm going to get soooo much crap for this" haha, because of the big deal i made about not dating. and because of being teased that something like this was going to happen, because this was classically how it always happened. i had truly believed, despite all of that, that i wasn't that cliche girl that, right when she swore off dating, this dream guy comes out of nowhere!
 honestly though, it was the best first date i've probably ever had, and i couldn't deny that! we clicked right from the beginning. the conversation was so easy and comfortable, and it was all just nice. i remember him telling me how refreshing it was to talk to me, right around the same time i was thinking the same thing :) we started the hike, got to the top, and talked for hours. and on the way back down, i remember thinking "if i don't marry this guy, i want to marry someone exactly like him", because i just knew this was the type of person that i just loved. and that was freaky to know that and feel that!
we saw each other almost every day after that (besides when i went out of town for a week), and then he asked me to be his girlfriend. just like in high school. cue the meesh heart melting into a puddle.

 

the kicker of all of this (and the reason why this story is my favorite) is that we found out a few weeks into dating that he had still been on his mission when i was in that ward he thought he had recognized me from. and i had already graduated and moved away when he was in that ward. meaning there's no way that's how he had known me, and yet had somehow luckily managed to guess that about me and make that connection that ultimately is causing us to get married in just a few hours. AND his dad had been the one that had convinced my best friends to move to dc, which would've been the reason i moved out to dc as well had i not met zach. what are the odds! that is exactly why i'm going to be the crazy old man on the notebook who loves telling his love story!