Our Story Finale...almost

Zach and I started dating again in July. We were immediately having serious conversations whenever we were together or on the phone about what we wanted in life, where the other person fit in our life plans, how we felt about each other, and what our next move was to be.

Zach had started looking for houses to buy several months before we were back together, and I had appointed myself as his real estate helper. I helped him search the web for listing and went with him to look at the houses so that I could ask the questions he wouldn't know to ask. I learned my house hunting skills from my mother. We used to move every two or three years when I was growing up. Looking for and finding a new house was so ingrained in me growing up, that when we had been in the same house for five years, I started asking when we were going to be moving because we had been there too long.

In looking at the houses, Zach always wanted to know what I thought, if I could see myself living there, that sort of thing. It was amazing how little time it took for my perspective to change (and imagine living in the houses) and for him to start suggesting that if he bought a house that needed some work, perhaps he could let me live there in exchange for helping him fix things and decorating. From there, my imagination started picturing actually living there with Zach, and it didn't seem strange, but oddly normal and right.

Zach was very smooth in his transition from talking about me living in the house he bought to me just living with him in general. I was then forced to tell him that I would never live with someone again (I did that once before and it didn't work out) before I married them. I should have known that he thought that was the perfect solution, that I should marry him. So, when we started dating again in July, we were already talking about spending our lives together, I just had no idea how short the timeline would become.

Zach found the house of his dreams shortly after we started dating again. Actually, I found the house online and fell in love with the pictures of it from the outside (that was the only thing available). I sent him the link to the house twice without realizing it. As it turned out, his friend and real estate agent Donna Lane with Carolina Realty, was the listing agent for the house. He had decided that the house was out of his budget and that he wasn't going to go look at it. She finally convinced him to go, and that was it, he fell in love.


Once Zach made an offer on the house and it was accepted, we started talking about getting engaged. I sent him links to rings that I liked online, and told him that I'd love to have an Ascher cut diamond, but also liked Emerald cuts. I also told him about my love of sapphires and my preference for platinum. Zach took these details and ran with them. He found the perfect Ascher cut diamond through Jolly's Jewelers, and asked our hometown jeweler, Daniel Evans, to make the setting. The end result was absolutely amazing. I can honestly say that I think my engagement ring is the most beautiful one that I have ever seen. I will never be jealous of anyone elses, nor can I imagine seeing something that I would like better. Zach had the perfect ring made just for me, and there isn't another like it.

My gorgeous ring.

Zach asked me to marry him the day he got the ring from Mr. Evans. That happened to be the same day that our fourth friend wedding of the year occured. Zach was one of the groomsmen, and I helped out where I could.

"Cake" topper at the fourth friend wedding of the year.

After the wedding and reception were over, we went back to Zach's father's house. He asked me to marry him on the front porch of his family home on August 2, 2008, with the help of a letter he had written. It was the most romantic thing he could have done. Zach has always been a letter writer when it came to me. He has written me many times over the years, and I have kept every one of them. This one will one day be framed, even though his handwriting is attrocious, hahaha.

We went out that night with our newly married friends to celebrate their union, and announce the impending status of our own!


After we were engaged, we talked about the date of the wedding. Because of the house, Zach didn't want to wait that long to be married. He wanted to get married and then move into the house. I have always wanted a fall wedding. It was the only kind of wedding I ever pictured having. Zach's desire for a short engagement left me with a difficult choice - have a wedding in two or three months, or get married in the spring. My mom convinced me that I could get it done in time for a fall wedding, and so we chose October 18, 2008. We became the sixth and final wedding among our friend's wedding calendar.

These are my favorites of the engagement photos.

This was the best picture I'd seen of myself in years before the wedding. And the one below was the best one I had ever seen of Zach up to that point in time.

Pictures taken by our friend Adam Casey at the Reynolda Gardens in Winston Salem, NC.

We had a beautiful ceremony and reception on a friend's farm land. It was simple, but beautiful in my opinion. It was better than I had ever imagined. I'll make a separate post about the ceremony to show off pictures.

The after wedding events are an entire story unto themselves that I will tell you about them in another post as well.