Zach and I met at a friend’s house and through mutual friends on August 9, 2010. We felt instantly connected after discovering we both went to Miami University and spent the entire day on the boat and beach together. We began “talking” and a few weeks later, he asked me to be his girlfriend.

Zach had recently enlisted in the US Army but hadn’t told me for fear of scaring me away. But I had already fallen for him and decided to see where things went.

He left for Basic Training in early November and our relationship grew through postcards and letters. When he came home in December for Christmas, he asked me to marry him. We spent 2 weeks together before he returned to Basic Training for another 2 months.

We knew he would get orders to his first duty station right after Basic Training, and we also knew I couldn’t be on those orders if we weren’t married. We decided “why wait?!” and that if we could, we’d get married the next time we saw each other. We discussed what we could through letters and hoped for the best!

I traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia with my parents to attend his Turning Blue ceremony and Graduation. We had planned to get married in a garden along the Riverwalk in Columbus, GA after his ceremony.

With only our officiant, my parents, his parents, and his grandma, we said “I do”. We celebrated with dinner at Houlihan’s and after dinner, we dropped him back off at the barracks.

We had planned to have a wedding reception that June but upon arriving at his first duty station, we learned he’d be deploying to Afghanistan. The wedding planning ended and we prepared to send him overseas. We also learned we were expecting our first child and prepared to take on our role as parents, all while facing a deployment head on.

We had talked about a vow renewal for years and as we were planning it, it snowballed into a full blown wedding! But it was everything we could have hoped for and more. We were able to have all of the traditional wedding moments and spend the night dancing away with loved ones.

Zach was injured in a training with the Army and his previous ring had shattered, causing some of the fragments to get embedded in his skin! Since then, he had chosen to wear silicone. But now that he’s out of the Army, we wanted a new band to commemorate 10 years of marriage. I wanted a band that would sit on my right hand, above my Nana’s wedding band that I wear everyday. I wanted it to be a statement piece and a piece that was special on it’s own to celebrate our love.