How I met my partner: From meeting in college to a wedding proposal on Mount Fuji for Cork couple

Zoe Holman and Jack Rudden met when they were in first year of college in Dublin in 2016, and are now planning their wedding after nearly eight years of growing up by each other’s side.

“We met when we were 18, I was house sharing with my friend and her boyfriend at the time, and said boyfriend had brought some friends from college over,” Zoe told The Echo.

“I didn’t know them, so I arrived back and was just being weird in the way one might be with friends they know really well, but I walked into the living room and there were two strangers staring at me.

“I had to pivot, try and act normal and then we all had dinner together before me and my friend went out, and we ended up talking about the two people — I said one was really nice but the other seemed rude.

“Those people kept turning up at our house, and I realised they weren’t rude, they were just shy and we ended up having loads in common and getting to know each other slowly at my house.”

They were friends for months, realising they liked the same food, music and art and spending lots of time together “and all of a sudden we were like ‘we’re kind of in a relationship, aren’t we?’”

They made it official in 2017, and moved in together after a year and a half when Zoe was in a house share and Jack was looking to move out of home.

“We got a really lovely one bedroom cottage in Dublin 8.

“ We moved in together quite quickly especially so young, so it was risky, a lot of people thought it wouldn’t work. It did teach us a lot about who we are as people, but it was amazing, and we stayed there from 2018-2021.”

They moved to Berlin together afterwards, but didn’t enjoy it, and came back to Zoe’s native West Cork after six months, she explained, saying: “We didn’t know what to do with our lives or where we wanted to be, it was 2021 so still a bit covid-y and there weren’t a lot of opportunities.”

They lived with her parents for a while and loved being in West Cork, so they spent 18 months building a little home together, “and that was two years ago, now we live there together, we have chickens and a garden and just a really nice life.”

The couple love to travel together, and Jack surprised Zoe with a proposal on Mount Fuji in Japan on her birthday.

She said: “It was so nice, after we went to a lovely little restaurant and then a jazz bar — we were the only people in there and we were drinking whiskey saying ‘teehee, we’re engaged and nobody knows!’”

They are planning a sustainable budget wedding in West Cork using as many local producers as possible.

“Essentially, we went from being 18 in college and drinking cheap Tesco cans and going out a lot to being 26 and engaged and living in our own house. We travel a lot, we’re very outdoorsy so it’s just such an amazing progression.

“A lot of people don’t stay together for this whole period of their lives, so it’s so cute to look back on how much we’ve changed but how much we’ve changed and grown together.”