Hillary Zevenbergen has looked up to Alexander Kilby since their first encounter, and not just professionally: At six feet tall, she still stood five inches shorter than him. "I went to shake his hand, and I was a little star struck," says Hillary, who met him while interviewing for a job at the Seattle software company where he worked. Alex recalls that moment in June 2014 with equal verve. "Hillary was a breath of fresh air," he says. "Intelligent, energetic, and smoking hot. I like to remember her hair blowing backward, like she was in a photo shoot." Despite their initial connection, the pair put their work relationship first, and for the next two years were constantly setting each other up with friends. Then one day Alex took a leap of faith and texted Hillary, telling her how he felt. Seconds later, she responded in kind. After two happy, company-approved years beyond the friend zone, Alex proposed during a trip with Hillary's family to Hawaii.
Unlike their courtship, their engagement was brief—only four months. "We just really wanted to get married; it was fun to keep the excitement going," Hillary explains. On September 29, 2018, 229 guests gathered at the bride's childhood home in Woodway, Washington, where the couple wed against a backdrop of emerald-green grounds and views of Puget Sound. There wasn't a dry eye in the garden by the time the officiant, a longtime friend of the bride's family, finished. Then laughter filled the air as the groom threw the recessional off course: The couple had planned to hug their parents, but Alex went on to embrace his two best men and several old family friends. "He was ridin' the love train, and I had to rope him back in so we could go sign the papers and make it official," Hillary says.
Once they were back on track, the festivities began. After sipping late-harvest-berry spritzes and drinks from a whiskey-tasting bar outside, guests drifted into a tent and enjoyed a family-style feasts of steak, salmon, and pasta at tables dressed in the day's 1920s-era palette of black, white, and gold. Toasts and dancing followed. "Alex may be tall, but he knows how to cut a rug," Hillary says of their first dance, to "Coming Home," by Leon Bridges. Later, the bride grabbed the mic for an impromptu performance of her beloved Céline Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now." And by the end of the night, everyone was looking up to the couple—because they were floating on cloud nine.
