How We Met
We met in high school, but our stories go different paths here! Zach thinks him and I met near our school cafeteria when we were walking with a group of friends and I came up and told him that “we’re going to be best friends.” I will tell you that we met near a stack of lockers and struck up a conversation there. No matter which story is actually true or which one you believe, we were best friends in high school before heading to the University of Central Florida (Go Knights!), which is where we started dating over five years ago!
how they asked
Zach is graduating this May from graduate school AND law school so I got him to agree to allow me to plan a graduation photo shoot to celebrate, I started planning since early January – little did I know it was my proposal shoot the entire time!
In Zach’s words: Since I bought the ring in December, I had been coming up with ways to propose to Carly to make sure it was perfect and a complete surprise. As I was thinking of ways to do it, I thought one of the best ways was to do a “graduation photo shoot” so that Carly’s suspicions would be limited and we can easily have a photographer there. I am not the type to suggest doing a photo shoot so I even had my parents “push” her and me to do one, even though they knew what the plan was going to be. I reached out to Ingrid (Molliner Photography) and started planning, but I knew that to make this seem legitimate, I had to have Ingrid reach out to Carly. Every detail that Ingrid and I discussed the photo shoot (time, location, etc.) at some point went through Carly. She thought she was planning the entire shoot, but in reality, the shoot was already completely set up!
After taking some traditional graduation photo at the law school, we got to the football stadium and my nerves really started to kick in. I had the ring box in my suit pocket and as we were walking onto the field, Carly decided to give me a big hug from behind, squeezing the ring box into my ribs! I thought for sure she knew the box was in there, but I tried to play it off by saying she was jabbing my keys (also in my suit pocket) into my ribs. Carly says she doesn’t remember me saying anything about my keys and did not feel the ring box so I got very lucky there, but I was freaking out at this point. When Ingrid asked Carly a question about my graduation, I knew that was my cue that the timing was just about right. Ingrid then asked me about having Carly there to support me through law school and I knew that the biggest moment of my life was here.
I started saying something about how much having her in my life for the past 10 years has meant, and then I got down on one knee. From that point on, I don’t remember anything except time standing still and it seeming like it was just me and my future wife in that stadium. No cameras, no people working out, just Carly and me. I have no idea how long I was on a knee for or who was in that stadium with us – all I know is that when she said YES and she kissed me and I put that ring on her finger, it was a dream come true.
