Kelsey and Matthew Zbaracki were married at Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Blue Earth on Aug. 4, 2018.

When Matthew and Kelsey Zbaracki met for the first time in November of 2016, they were asked to leave the cozy book and coffee shop they had selected for their first date.

They weren’t doing anything wrong – they simply had so much to talk about that they overstayed the shop’s operating hours.

“We had a lot of shared interests. At one point, we were talking about film score composers,” Matthew remembers. “We both have a musical background. At the time, I was working at Schmitt Music as a piano mover.”

Kelsey, meanwhile, was teaching music.

Matthew is now a jailor for Faribault County, while Kelsey is currently the band director at Blue Earth Area High School.

“I’m a fan of most music,” she says. “I grew up listening to country music, but I have a wide range – classical included.”

Before accepting her first teaching job in Buffalo, where she and Matthew met for their first date, Kelsey grew up in Blue Earth playing piano, singing in choir and playing clarinet in the Blue Earth Area High School band.

She decided to become a band director when she was a sophomore.

“The director at the time – Mark Frahm – he believed in me,” Kelsey says. “He let me student conduct a lot. I realized I had a natural talent for it, that I enjoyed it, and I wanted to make a career out of it.”

Matthew, meanwhile, grew up playing the trumpet, piano, percussion, bass guitar, trombone and the euphonium.

While Kelsey had a small-town upbringing in Blue Earth, Matthew grew up in Coon Rapids, and also spent a lot of summers in Northern Minnesota and Canada.

“I half grew up in the cities, and half grew up up North,” he summarizes.

He was living in Roseville when he and Kelsey first met, but he traveled to Buffalo for their first date and to pop the question in October of 2017.

The pair went on a walk that day around Buffalo Lake.

“For me, it just felt like a normal day. It was a Saturday,” Kelsey remembers. “(Matthew) stopped at one point, got down on one knee, and proposed.”

The wedding happened within a year, on Aug. 4, 2018.

The couple was married in Kelsey’s hometown, at Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church.

“We wanted a more traditional Catholic wedding,'”Matthew recalls. “We’re both Catholic and grew up with that being the focus.”

The wedding was conventional in many aspects, with blessedly few surprises or hiccups throughout the day.

“Everything went nice and smooth, which was good,” Kelsey says.

“I can’t think of any unique things about it, just that it was ours,” Matthew adds.

They reflect that part of the reason they were able to enjoy such a carefree wedding day was because of the time they spent carefully planning in the months leading up to the event.

“We put in a lot of forethought, so we had most things set up several months before,” Matthew explains.“I think that helps take away from things you have to do the day of, the day before or the day after. Those are the really big moments when you can easily add a lot of stress.”

“Just have a solid game plan,” Kelsey advises. She recommends consulting a wedding planning checklist on a resource like The Knot.

The couple’s reception venue, Fairmont’s Holiday Inn, had staff available to set up decorations, which was another huge help.

“If you find a reception venue where they’ll help set things up for you and take things down, that’s really nice,” Kelsey notes.

Overall, the couple did not bring too many requirements or expectations to their wedding day, However, Kelsey was set on having the first look be down the aisle.

Although much of the ceremony was accompanied by church hymns, Kelsey and her bridesmaids – clad in red – processed to Twila Paris’s ‘How Beautiful.’

Following the ceremony, the wedding party relocated via limo to the reception.

Green Mill catered a delicious chicken meal for their guests, but Kelsey and Matthew regret that – per the usual wedding day stereotype – they did not get to taste a bite of it.

“With everything going on, with all the speeches, we didn’t actually get to the point where we got to eat the food,” Matthew says.

The newlyweds did, however, get to dance the night away to tunes provided by Stage 1 Sound.

Given their conversation on their first date, it was fitting that Matthew and Kelsey made their grand entrance at the reception to a song from a movie soundtrack: ‘The Greatest Show’ from the smash movie musical ‘The Greatest Showman,’ which was released just a few months after they got engaged.

The couple’s first dance was to Nat King Cole’s ‘Unforgettable.’

“I really like that one,” Matthew says.

The father-daughter dance was accompanied by Tim McGraw’s ‘My Little Girl,’ while the mother-son dance was to the tune of ‘Simple Man’ by Shinedown.

Kelsey says the reception was one of her favorite parts of her wedding day.

“The reception was really fun – there was lots of dancing,” she says. “There’s a lot of good moments.”

One of Matthew’s favorite parts of the day took place just after the ceremony, when he and Kelsey greeted their guests after they were pronounced husband and wife.

“That was nice, because it felt like it was the first thing we did as a married couple,” Matthew explains. “It felt like, ‘This is us as a married couple. We’re married, and we’re doing what married people do – shaking people’s hands after the wedding.'”

Now, the couple has been ‘doing what married people do’ for over five years.

With their wedding day half a decade in the rear view, the Zbarackis agree that one of the keys to being married is communication.

“You don’t realize when you’re getting married that you have different backgrounds, and your communication styles are different,” Kelsey explains.

Matthew adds that it is important to remember not to make assumptions about what your partner is thinking.

The Zbarackis also agree there are lots of good things about being married.

Matthew says he enjoys having the support of a dedicated partner.

“Having someone you can turn to, for whatever happens,” he elaborates.

Meanwhile, Kelsey enjoys the companionship of marriage.

“Just having someone every day you can talk to,” she explains. “Our kids, too. Kids are always a plus,”

The couple has three sons – a four-year-old, a two-year-old and a one-year-old.

“There is lots of energy in our house,” Kelsey observes.

And, their house also contains several musical instruments.

“I have a cello I want to learn how to play,” Matthew says. Kelsey, meanwhile, received an alto saxophone from her mother-in-law for Christmas a few years ago.

“We had a piano that, thankfully, (the kids) have stopped banging on,” Matthew laughs. He adds, “I like to tease Kelsey – what if (the kids) don’t like music?”

Kelsey doesn’t see that being a problem, however.

“They’re a little young still, but they like music,” she says. “We have music on in the house, and they like to dance to it.”