Real Brides: Megan

My husband and I met during our senior year of high school at a tech school in Lancaster County, PA. Although we went to different schools growing up, we both ended up at the same career school. He was studying electrical work, and I was studying photography. At the time, I was dating someone else from his electrical class, and my husband’s initial impression of me was that I was "annoying and always got the class riled up." I eventually became the class photographer, so I spent a lot of time around him and his classmates.

Fast forward to graduation: the guy I was dating and I realized we weren’t on the same path, so we broke up but stayed friends. A few months later, I reconnected with my now-husband, Matthew, online, and I remembered him from the class. We started talking, hanging out, and that marked the beginning of a long, complicated, but beautiful love story.

We’ve been in this relationship for seven years now, come November. However, for about four of those years, we were on and off and dated other people in between, but we always ended up back together. We both wanted the same things, just at different times, so we had a back-and-forth relationship for a while. Then in December 2021, we decided to give it another try, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. We got engaged in July 2022 and planned to have our wedding in September 2024. Everything was so exciting, but life doesn’t always go as planned. We found out we were pregnant in August 2023 and had our son in April 2024. We eloped and got married in October 2023, but celebrated with a formal event on September 22nd, which is when I wore the dress.

We had a classy black-and-white wedding, and I’ve always loved the simple, elegant Marilyn Monroe style from that era. When I put on that dress, I felt just like that bride—an elegant, beautiful Marilyn Monroe moment.

My husband always said, "Don’t let the dress wear you; you wear the dress." I live by that whenever I go shopping because it’s so true. That’s exactly how it should be. Your dress was a perfect "don’t let the dress wear you; you wear the dress" moment for me.