Kelsea Ballerini + Morgan Evans — Country’s Greatest Love Stories
On Dec. 2, 2017, Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Evans tied the knot in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, after a whirlwind courtship. The talented couple originally met in Australia — where Evans is from — in March of 2016. After co-hosting an awards show, they let loose at the after-party with tequila shots.
"He was like, 'Let’s take a shot,'" Ballerini told People. "I remember taking that shot and putting it down and looking at him like, 'Oh … he's super-hot.' Later that night he leaned over and asked if he could kiss me, like a proper gentleman, and I said yes."
From there, the couple's romance moved fast; in fact, Evans proposed to Ballerini on Christmas Day 2016, with a personalized ring full of diamonds. "I had the ring custom-made with a diamond I picked from a local designer here in Nashville,” Evans told PeopleStyle. “I wanted it to be classic and beautiful, like her."
Next to a gleeful Instagram photo in which she's showing off the bling, Ballerini wrote, "This morning, 9 months and 13 days later, he got down on one knee in the kitchen while I was burning pancakes and asked me to marry him. Loving him has been the greatest gift of my life. And now I get to do it for life." For good measure, she added the hashtag #HECALLEDDIBS, in a nod to her hit song.
Fittingly, the couple was confident in their engagement and sanguine about what marriage was going to bring. "In the lead-up to a wedding, you ask a lot of your married friends — especially people that are in similar situations or similar age — 'Does anything change or is it just the same but a little more awesome?' Everyone keeps telling us, 'Ah, it gets better,'" Evans told People. “And so whatever that means, I’m looking forward to that, and it’s gonna be fun."
“With our careers, we get to do what we love, then we get to find time to be with who we love. I think that makes for a really full life — when you can do everything that you want, and then share it with someone,” Ballerini added, with the caveat that she and Evans aren't "wedding people."
"It’s more being married that we’re stoked about," she admitted.
Still, the couple's nuptials were full of picture-perfect details, including a gorgeous dress (a Berta gown with a lace bodice), a romantic first dance song (Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years") and thoughtful vows.
"Kelsea’s vows were, as you would expect, poetic, sweet — like, mindblowingly good," Evans told People. "Our officiant was like, 'Hey, Morgan, beat that!' I said mine, and I was going to finish with a few lines of the first song I wrote for her ["Dance with Me"]. I got halfway through them, and she started to lose it, then I started to lose it — so I ended up having to cut it a little bit short!"
And, of course, the couple and guests celebrated "I do!" with a tequila shot.
"It’s a little bit different," Ballerini told People, "but that’s how we started."