TEN years in the making...

In 2013, Michelle was working at Moes Southwest Grill in Southington; Avery was part of the band Forget Tomorrow that coincidently always went to Moes together on Thursday nights. That winter, Michelle started working the shift when Avery's band would visit weekly. Michelle's coworker's referred to the all-boy band as the "Chicken Club Band Boys" referring to the fact that nearly the entire band would all order a Moe's favorite the chicken club quesadilla. In fact, everyone in the band, except Avery would have the exact same, identical meal. Michelle noticed the non-cheese eating boy immediately. Soon, Michelle was requesting to work Thursday night shfits for the tiny hope that she would get to see the stack boy from the chicken club band: Avery. Michelle became the one person at Moes that could make Avery's food right, so naturally, he began to notice her too. It must have been something about the way that she was able to use guacamole instead of cheese to keep his stack together that made him notice her. "I rolled his burrito, he thought I was neato, he asked to see my tweets"-Avery

After several cheese-less encounters through the counter of Moes, Avery asked Michelle for her twitter...and the rest was history...well not exactly... 7 years of friendship before finally getting on the same page to be together officially on February 1, 2020...and then...the rest was a pandemic! With all the bad the pandemic brought, it brought us time together that we wouldn't have otherwise had.

TO KEEP ME FROM YOU... Vermont is a very special place to us. In fact, it is a place where we took our first trip together several years ago, and several years before we were actually "together." We learned a lot about each other in that trip and built memories of a lifetime...like when we lost Michelle's car key on a hiking path in the SNOW. Don't worry, Avery found the key, and Michelle only fell once. That trip was the first time we solidified something very important: we can get through anything together. Michelle's love for Vermont extends from her memories with Avery and deep into her childhood and also is home to her graduate school the Bread Loaf of English. It was at Bread Loaf in the summer of 2019 that Michelle realized Avery was the one for her....it would still take him 6 more months but that's okay that's okay... Anyway...NINE YEARS after we met, Michelle was invited to attend a trip to Vermont with Avery's cover band Pulse to perform at the Wobbly Barn in Killington, Vermont. The show landed on the weekend of Avery's birthday and Michelle of course could not turn down a chance to see the mountains. After the first successful perfomance, Michelle and Avery and the Pulse bandmates and girlfriends prepared for a night to celebrate Avery's birthday. But little did Michelle know that every body else was preparing to celebrate much more that night. Avery waited until right before his third set, just after midnight, officially his birthday. Michelle had been hanging out on the second floor of the bar that night and to get her down below, Avery told her he wanted her to film something at the beginning of the set. This is not an abnormal request as the girlfriend of a rockstar so Michelle began recording. Luckily, our friend Cathy was close by to capture the moment when Michelle puts down the camera and realizes Avery is on stage talking about marriage. With the help of bandmates and Meredith, we have videos of all angles (as do strangers) of Avery asking Michelle to be his wife on stage, in front of a whole bar full of people, the way he said he never would do. Michelle was incredibly surprised and full of tears and joy when she said "of course, I will."