According to Country Weekly, Pitney and Bankester will be married in a church in her hometown of Carbondale, Ill., with about 170 guests in attendance. The pair met there as teenagers, while both performing at a bluegrass festival.

“I went home and told all my buddies, ‘I just saw the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life,’” Pitney, a native of Rockford, Ill., recalls. However, “I found myself always kind of chasing her around … Her mom had advised her to stay away from me at the time … Her mom said she thought I was way too full of myself back then … And she was right, too. I was pretty arrogant back then.”

Pitney and Bankester reconnected two years ago, after both had similar faith-related experiences. They began talking regularly, and “[a]ll of a sudden, we both kind of realized that we weren’t just friends anymore. We realized we wanted to be more than just friends.”

“Things moved pretty quickly,” Pitney adds, with the couple managing a long-distance relationship, with Bankester in Carbondale and Pitney in Nashville. Pitney bought an engagement ring after they’d been dating for 10 months and proposed in September.

During Pitney and Bankester’s wedding ceremony, his brother, sister and father, as well as her two sisters and brother-in-law, will sing. Pitney himself will also perform an original song, called “You Touch Me,” “about Emily, but it’s also about God.” They have planned a honeymoon in Colorado, then will live in Ashland City, Tenn.

It’s going to be a big weekend for Mo Pitney and his fiancee, Emily Bankester. The couple will celebrate their wedding on Saturday (March 5).