In case you missed my Instagram over the weekend or my mention in Monday's blog post, TJ and I are engaged! Thank you to everyone for all of the well wishes and sweet messages we have received over the last few days. There are so many planning decisions to make, especially with the current state of the world...but we are just so excited! I have been wanting to write this post for a very long time.  But have been waiting until we were engaged to tell it. I make short references to it, but I'm sharing the full story of how TJ and I met!

I don't mention it too much on the blog, but my Catholic faith is very important to me. I always attended Catholic school (all the way through college), and my church and school in Greensboro were connected during my elementary and middle school years. My mom was very involved in fundraising events for the school, and our family became close with the pastor at the time, Father Frank. Diocesan priests are often moved around, so he was only there for about 3 years while I was in elementary school. He had spent a good portion of his career in Charlotte before then (if you're not from NC, about a 1.5 hour drive apart), so he was sent back to the parish where he previously served. Fast forward about 11 years later when I move to Charlotte after graduating from college (August 2016), and I joined the church where Father Frank was still the pastor. Whenever my parents would visit, they would make sure we went to the mass he was saying to chat with him after.

About a year later (November 2017), he sends me an email about a "young man he often sees at mass" that he thought I should meet. He asked if he could share my contact information with him, so I agreed. He copied TJ on my response, and TJ sent me a reply with this number. We started texting and ended up meeting for drinks about a week later. Now on TJ's side of the story...he received a call from Father Frank several days before he contacted me, saying he knew a girl in the church he thought he should meet. TJ agreed to connect with me, thinking Father Frank had already spoken with me. He said he would call TJ back in 5 minutes. Several days go by, as he has not sent this email yet. So poor TJ thought I ghosted him before I even knew his name. But I was quick to respond to his email, and the rest is history! My mom said it was divine intervention and my friends called him "church boy" for the first few weeks. And we have mostly been referring to Father Frank as "Father Matchmaker" since then. TJ's parents live in town, so I quickly learned he always went to an earlier mass with them, while I went to a later mass by myself. Little did I know, I was in the same spot as my future husband every Sunday for a year, but we were just there at different times. I knew all of the prayers that I had said for my future husband were answered when TJ came into my life, and I just cannot wait to share our lives together! Father Frank actually retired last fall, but we are hoping he will be able to marry us. We're going to respond to his original email with the news!

My next wedding related post will likely be how he proposed, but I don't think I'll be doing a Wedding Wednesday post every week. Maybe once a month? We will see, there's so many little details that I never given much thought until I have been diving into Pinterest over the last few days! Please let me know what you would like to see, and share your favorite wedding resources!

Thanks for reading!