Widowed Man and Woman Meet and Fall in Love. Then On Their Wedding Day, a Double Rainbow Appears (Exclusive)

Michelle and Scott got a beautiful sign their union is just right

• Michelle and Scott first meant in a Facebook support group for widowed people in their area

• The two struck up a fast friendship that led to romance

• The newlyweds tell PEOPLE what it was like to see a double rainbow appear on the day of their wedding
  

Two people looking for love after heartbreak found each other. As they fell in love and got married, there was a special sign from above that theirs was a fateful union.

Scott and Michelle first got to know each other as two widowed people.

"I grew up a military brat and got into construction management, so I moved around a lot throughout my life. I was married previously to Lisa, my wife of 29 years," Scott tells PEOPLE. "We were in Northern Virginia, where I started working a job with the federal government. I have three kids and two dogs."

"I was born and raised in Fairfax, Virginia. In 1999, I got married to Jonathan, and we were married for about 23 years," Michelle shares. "We lived out of the country for 10 of those years before moving back to the Fairfax area. I have four children and six dogs."

The two first connected in a Facebook group for widows in the Washington, D.C./Maryland/Virginia area. After taking a closer look at Michelle's profile, Scott realized that his sister was a mutual friend.

"He reached out to me and said, 'You don't know me, but I noticed your mutual friends to my sister,' and that's kind of how the conversation started," she says. "What's interesting is his sister and I never met. We went back and forth and danced around each other in Northern Virginia for years.

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"Her son and my nephew were friends for a while, also," Scott says. "It's a small world kind of thing."

Michelle and Scott became good friends fast.

"We had so many commonalities in the way of background and future goals. It was just amazing and I think that's what launched us pretty fast," she says.

"For me, it was more than that," he adds. "It was Michelle's sense of humor and her sense of life. And it just really attracted me, which I figured out after a little while."

Michelle helped Scott with cooking and ended up spending more and more time with him. He was happy to return the favor when she set out to make a DIY busy board for her toddler grandson.

"We were working on that project together and the conversation came up about whether we'd ever get married again," Michelle recalls. "And I said, 'No, I think I'm happy with the way things are.' "

"We laugh about it now, because that was a little less than five months before she accepted my proposal," Scott says, noting he himself didn't even know that's where the connection was headed at the time.

"She would tell me things she wanted to do and I didn't want her to think I was shining her on, but they were the exact goals I had," he says. "Her plans just appealed to me greatly."

Things had started taking a turn for the romantic when Scott decided to go for it with a special Valentine's Day gift.

"I actually gave it a lot of thought. I said, 'I really like her, I think I'm going to send her two dozen roses.' By the time I got done with the discussion with myself, I ended up sending her 100 roses for Valentine's Day," he recalls.

"When I got 100 roses delivered to me at work, I was in shock," Michelle adds. "I said, 'I've got to give this guy a chance. That's a pretty cool move.' "

Months into their relationship, Scott knew he wanted to propose and decided her job, where Michelle is surrounded by "so many good friends that are almost like family," was the perfect place.

"I ended up proposing on the dock at the school where she worked and her boss was in cahoots with it, as was her mother, and they all helped me and set it up and orchestrated it," Scott says.

The two have been overjoyed, not just to find love with each other, but to bring their families together.

"We are so thankful for the fact both of our children have been so supportive. They're actually the ones who wanted us to have a wedding," Michelle says.

"They wanted to be involved and see us get married. His daughter, Jill, is a part-time wedding planner, so she helped there," Michelle continues. "My daughter, Alyssa, works at a florist, so she helped there. It was just a huge family affair. The ring bearers were our grandsons and his granddaughter and my niece were the flower girls. My three boys walked me down the aisle."

The two thought their outdoor ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 7 would be derailed by a rainy morning, but 10 minutes before they got started, the sun came out.

"As the ceremony was going on. It went from dark to light and the hint of drizzle went away. The wind died down. Then almost right after the ceremony, the first rainbow appeared as [photographer] Chelsea started taking pictures," Scott says.

"And then as the pictures continued, a second rainbow appeared. I don't know that Michelle and I even noticed it until Chelsea said something we turned around. And there, it was right behind us. We just sat and stared at it for a few minutes. And it was the brightest boldest rainbow we'd ever seen. It was amazing and it it was so big and we could see almost see the whole thing. Yeah. And it was just a nice confirmation."

Michelle agrees, adding, "We really feel like God led us here and brought us together. The rainbows almost seemed to be a confirmation of that."

The two were even more surprised when Chelsea shared video from the day on TikTok, where it went viral as people commented on the significance of the double rainbow in Michelle and Scott's story.

"It is hard for to have hope after you lose someone that things are going to get better or that you're going to meet someone else if you wish to do that," Michelle says. "So it was really nice to be able to give such hope to other widows. I wasn't expecting that, but I'm really glad that that it did do that."

"We hope this can be something positive for everyone," Scott says. "I certainly didn't expect this. I dreaded going out and meeting people after so long. I was kind of set in my ways. But with her sense of humor and her personality, I just love spending every minute with her."

Michelle adds, "It's nice to share our relationship with everyone else. We've had comments that said, 'I didn't believe in an afterlife until I saw this,' and that's really special to me personally."