We’re Getting Married!

We are firm believers these days that everything happens for a reason. Our meeting was brief and by chance but the impact was lasting. We just so happened to walk into the right room at the right moment at a friends house and we were lucky enough to notice time stopped in something so simple as a hello and a handshake. Sometimes the moments that change our lives are the ones so brief that if we were to so much as blink we may not even have noticed. Claire was supposed to get a ride home from a mutual friend that night, Chris took that friend aside and said, “I would really like to give her a ride home if that’s ok”. That ten minute ride home brought laughter, ease, and comfort that only a magical combination of a great love yet to happen and fate can indicate. The two had been so caught up in conversation though they had failed to exchange phone numbers… Six months passed and the two found themselves in the same room at the same time at just the right moment again…. The two had a magical first date. Dinner turned into coffee that turned into a walk (in the rain but neither seemed to notice or care) that turned into seeing a movie. Something just felt right, like two people who had unknowingly been waiting for that particular person all along. The rest really is history.

Chris and Claire have two long-standing traditions on their anniversary. Every year on their anniversary they go to El Coqui, the Peruvian restaurant they went to on their first date. It felt like something special happened there for them and that it’s the perfect place to revisit where something lovely started for the two of them. The second tradition the two have is asking each other, what are you looking forward to this year? This tradition started because the two had their first date shortly after New Years, on January 6th 2016. It felt like such a lovely way to look forward and feel hopeful about the future. In 2019 things would shift a bit in the world. Due to a global pandemic the two wouldn’t be able to celebrate their anniversary in the usual way and the pandemic had made everything feel so uncertain. January 6th 2021 rolled around and the two decided to order take out from El coqui and celebrate in their living room this year (which was starting to feel like the norm by then). After dinner Claire asked Chris the usual question and he got up from the couch and started to get down on one knee. He said, I would really like to plan a wedding this year. Will you marry me? For the first time in her life, in the best way possible, Claire was speechless. Once she remembered how to make words go from her brain to her mouth she shouted “YES!”.

After about two years of engagement and many wedding related conversations, we have decided to go with an intimate gathering of just immediate family and a couple of our friends to witness and celebrate our marriage. While it pains us that we will not be able to include everyone we cherish so much, this feels like the best decision for us at the moment. The pandemic brought much into focus for us and in hosting a smaller gathering we will be able to focus our efforts on a home purchase. We feel currently that building a home and creating a space where our friends and family always know they will be cared for, loved, and (most importantly) fed for years to come should be our priority while we start to create a family of our own in this next chapter. We love you all with all of our hearts, we are who are because of all of you and we are forever grateful for the insurmountable love in our lives.

We are so excited for what this year will bring. We are looking forward moving back to California from Oregon, we will have the absolute honor of witnessing some of our closest friends get married, and we’re really looking forward to doing some traveling for our honeymoon!