Chandler and I met the summer before our senior year of high school. Like all young love stories we met through social media, snapchat to be exact. The weekend it all began was in May of 2016 after my state soccer tournament. For people unfamiliar with snapchat, when you add a new friend they go to the top of your list to snap. Well, that weekend I had added a few of my soccer teammates when we were together. When we all got home from the tournament one of my teammates went to hang out with a giant group of her friends from her high school. The boys of the friend group took her phone and stated snapping away. Being at the top of her list I was lucky enough to receive a snap. I opened it and started a conversation with the random boy. Before the night ended he told me to add him on snapchat (chandler121198).

For a few weeks Chandler and I snapchatted all day long. It was the summer so I was busy playing high school soccer and he was busy working at the Collierville spray park. We chatted about our days and got to know each other as best as we could through 10 seconds snaps that automatically disappeared.

That summer the Memphis zoo had announced the welcoming of a new baby hippo. Someway or another one of us brought this up into our snapchat conversation. This eventually led to Chandler asking me on a date to the zoo. On June 23rd, 2016, I woke up with knots in my stomach. I didn’t eat all morning waiting for Chandler to pick me up for our first date. When he pulled up to the driveway I walked out and got into the car. First impression— “He was way cuter in person.” I remember thinking what are we going to talk about on the car ride down to the zoo, that’s like 30 minutes?? Well, we found something to talk about like we were already best friends. When we got out of the car at the zoo he shocked me again by being fricking tall! Cute and tall? “I better work it,” I thought to myself.

When we walked into the zoo, we were greeted with the people that make you take those overlypriced photos. They pretty much don’t let you say no, so we smiled and tried to get over how awkward we felt. I kept the little card they give you and we went on with the date. We both don’t remember too much, but that it was easy and perfect. It was the beginning of forever and we didn’t even know it. When I got home that day I, of course like a freak, looked up the photo we took. I screenshotted it and saved it. The rest is pretty much history.

And now more than 7 years later— we experienced our senior year of high school together, both went to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville for college, made new friends, experienced new things, went on numerous trips, got a dog (Jolene <3), graduated college, got big boy jobs (Target HQ), moved to Minneapolis together, got into PA school, moved back to Memphis together, and now we are settled into wedding planning! We can’t wait to start this new journey together surrounded by our wonderful friends and family!!