Two people. One beginning. A love that has been chosen — again and again — every step of the way.
It started without ceremony. A shared space, an introduction that neither of them anticipated, and no particular sense — on that first day — that any of this would matter.
What struck Michelle first was not anything dramatic. It was the way Michael listened — not scanning the room, not composing his next sentence, just fully present. She noticed. Then tried not to. Then noticed again.
For Michael, it was something different: the ease with which she moved through a room, warm without performing it, filling space she did not even know she occupied. He sat with that feeling quietly for a long time before he said a word.
What followed was the slow, wonderful work of knowing someone. Long conversations that stretched past midnight. Shared playlists and disagreements about film endings. Silences that, rather than feeling empty, felt like a kind of rest.
They discovered that they were different in all the right ways — his steadiness to her spontaneity, her laughter to his quiet seriousness — and alike in the ways that matter most: faith, family, and an unwavering belief that love should be chosen, actively and deliberately, every single morning.
"I did not fall in love with you. I walked into it — with my eyes open, my hands steady, and not a single regret."
Nairobi became the backdrop of their story: morning drives through Karen, Sunday lunches with too much food and not enough chairs, quiet Sundays at CITAM where prayer became as natural a part of their relationship as laughter.
Michael is deliberate by nature. He had thought about this for months — not anxiously, but with the steady certainty of someone who has already decided and is simply waiting for the right moment to speak it out loud.
He chose an evening that was entirely theirs. No crowd, no production. Just the two of them and everything he had been carrying in his chest, finally said.
She said yes before he finished. Afterwards they sat together for a long time without speaking — and both of them will tell you, that silence was the finest part of the whole evening.
In Kikuyu tradition, what two people feel privately must be brought into the open — before family, with witnesses, in the right way. The ruracio is not a formality. It is a declaration: this is serious, and it will be honoured.
Michael came before the Waema family with his people beside him. There were introductions, negotiations, laughter, and the careful, gracious dignity that the occasion demands. By the time the evening was over, it was not only Michelle and Michael who had said yes to each other — their families had too.
That matters. They did not build this alone.
Before the vows at CITAM Karen, Michelle and Michael stood together in full traditional ceremony — with colour, song, and every custom observed. Michelle wore the beads and cloth of her heritage. Michael arrived with his family and honoured hers.
There was joy in it. The particular, unhurried joy of a celebration that has been practised for generations and knows exactly what it is doing.
By the time the traditional wedding was over, they were already, in every meaningful sense, bound to one another. What follows on the 10th of July is not the beginning. It is the church bearing witness to a story already well underway.
On the 10th of July 2026, at CITAM Karen, Michelle and Michael will stand before God, before their families, and before the dearest people in their lives, and make a promise they have already been keeping for some time now.
They are not marrying because love is easy. They are marrying because they have chosen each other through the complicated parts, and they intend to keep choosing — with grace, with patience, with humour, and with faith.
They are grateful — deeply, almost embarrassingly grateful — that you will be there to witness it.
Always.