Thalia Ordaz and Alexis De La Garza have been happily engaged for more than a year. But, the couple doesn’t remember the first time they met.
It’s not because of a fit of amnesia. Or that their first encounter wasn’t memorable.
In fact, their story is so memorable, that it endured the test of time.
Quite literally.
Ordaz and De La Garza met when they were only 1 year old — in 1990, at Ordaz’s birthday party. The couple’s parents, Raul and Rosie Ordaz and Homero Jr. and Nora De La Garza, were family friends.
De La Garza was the first to arrive at the party. Rosie couldn’t help but take pictures of the two tots together.
The family joked that the two would get married someday.
De La Garza had snuck into the family photo album, but the two families soon grew apart. The party was the last Ordaz saw of him.
Until 2008.
Ordaz had just graduated from Durant High School, De La Garza from Plant City High School. A mutual group of friends brought them together for the summer.
Of course, their adult faces were now unrecognizable to each other.
When the two started dating, Ordaz told her mother about the special boy who was courting her. When the curious mother asked his name, she couldn’t believe her ears.
“I said, ‘Oh my gosh!’” Rosie Ordaz says. “I pulled out the photo album to show her the pictures.”
Ordaz couldn’t believe the connection, either.
“It was a weird shocker,” Ordaz says. “But, it was sweet. It was a big coincidence — a lucky coincidence.”
Ordaz learned her grandparents and De La Garza’s grandparents were from the same area of Mexico — Matamoros. They worked in the fields together and migrated to the same towns for work. Their parents even attended each other’s weddings.
The families ended up in Plant City. When life got busy, the two families grew apart.
But fate didn’t allow them to be separated for long.
When Ordaz texted him the picture and told him of their unknown connection, De La Garza found it funny.
“It’s weird that we had pictures together but didn’t even meet throughout high school,” De La Garza says.
After dating for four years, De La Garza proposed. He originally wanted to pop the question when the couple graduated in May 2012, from the University of South Florida. Ordaz was studying elementary education and De La Garza criminology.
But De La Garza couldn’t wait. He surprised Ordaz, and her family, with an Easter proposal. After breakfast, the couple took a walk at the Otis M. Andrews Sports Complex.
“I knew right away something was off,” Ordaz says. “At breakfast, he was pushing his food around and wasn’t himself.”
When De La Garza got down on one knee, Ordaz threw the ice cream cone she was eating to the ground.
The couple is planning an Aug. 3 wedding at St. Clement Catholic Church, with a reception, in Valrico. The guest list is up to 300 people.
“It’s like my big fat Mexican wedding,” Ordaz says, laughing.
Following the ceremony, the couple will cruise to the Caribbean on the Allure of the Seas.
They plan to live in Plant City close to their families, which will soon meld into one.
“Coming into the family has just been so easy,” De La Garza says. “The families know each other already.”
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.