For our 2 year anniversary, I decided that the only place I could take Nina on such a special occasion was a a little dinner and a little TRAIN RIDE (because of course, trains). Which we of course almost MISSED thanks to traffic, but, because I'm the substitute member of the fast and the Furious, we made it just in time. From the drinks to the food and of course, the views, everything was going according to plan. This girl even told me how this had been the most romantic day of her life and she had NO CLUE of what I was planning to do. Aaanndd neither did I, because I of course realized I had to actually ask the big question and had no idea how I was planning to do it. The rest of our time I had been panickedly plotting how to propose without any witnesses. So, as we're walking off the train, I “forgot” something and at the very last minute enlisted the help of the two remaining servers to make the moment happen. AND BOY DID THEY DELIVER!

I decided I wanted to try to give Kels a feeling as special as the one she had given me on the railroad and propose to her too. Everybody knows how much Kels loves wolves. My bridesmaid Nicole suggested taking her to a wolf sanctuary, and I found Wolf Hollow in Ipswich. After our tour I took her aside and even though I'd prepared what to say, my mind went blank when I presented her with her ring... fortunately I was saved by the wolves. After a few painfully awkward seconds they all started howling like it was for us! It was definitely a magical moment thanks to them, and I'm super relieved to have their blessing!

Although our wedding has plenty of traditional aspects to it, as queer people we also have a lot of freedom from conventional customs. We know we want to share a family name to make our partnership unambiguous to the world, but we struggled to choose just one of our last names or to keep and weren't keen on hyphenating. So when our good friend (and officiant) Xavier offhandedly said to us "just make your own name," it was like, oh yeah... we can do that! Together we chose a last name that would remind us of the love we have for each other every time we heard it. Amata: a female given name from Latin. From amāta, feminine form of amātus (“beloved”). Special thanks to Eric Boll for photography<3