It's Time!

We chose this wedding location because we feel like San Luis Obispo, and the Edna Valley, represent the best of California. This has become one of our favorite spots in the world: beautiful scenery, incredible farm-to-table food, fantastic wine, stunning beaches, and many great things to do. We hope you will accept our invitation to our wedding, but it is also an invitation to enjoy a vacation and explore what this wonderful area has to offer. We have put together several events over the course of the weekend to anchor the celebration, and hope you will choose to take part in all of them. Bringing our friends and family together in a place we love for a weekend of festivities is a great honor and pleasure for us, and we hope you can set some time aside for yourself -- and us -- and enjoy the full experience.

In the summer of 2005 in Barrington, Illinois, Ryan's parents told him he needed to figure out something to do for the summer instead of sitting around and playing video games. About the same time, in Strafford, New Hampshire, Lucy's parents informed her that she needed to attend a sleep-away camp in order to prove that she wouldn't get homesick if she went away to boarding school, which she was hoping to do. Both Ryan and Lucy ended up at Explo, a three week long program at Wellesley College (Lucy's grandmother's alma mater) for rising eighth and ninth graders to take classes, learn new skills, and give their parents a break for a few weeks. Lucy and Ryan both enrolled in a Mock Trial team, where their love of debating each other began. They became fast friends, and Ryan developed a pretty huge crush on Lucy, and let her know it. While at first she wasn't sure, by the end of Explo, the feelings were mutual and the two had a heartfelt and awkward goodbye on the last day, a day that Ryan's mother still remembers as "Ryan really took quite a long time to say goodbye to a girl at camp." The two young teenagers stayed in touch for the next few years, writing occasional letters, and Lucy even visited Ryan at Explo the next year for lunch (he returned as a camper, she did not). The winds of time were strong, however, and the two eventually fell out of touch, though they retained fond memories of young love and summer days. Thirteen years pass, and bring us to December 2018. Lucy has been living in San Francisco for years, and Ryan in Champaign, Illinois. Both have been visiting their families for the holidays in Naples, Florida, for the past several years. But, this year, a brief demonstration of showing her Uncle "what this whole swipe right thing was about" results in Lucy's location on Tinder updating to 2 miles away from where Ryan was absent-mindedly swiping. His heart stops. "I know her!" Ryan immediately searches his phone contacts to see if he still had Lucy's number; he does (Lucy hasn't changed her phone number since 2007). A few minutes later, they are texting back and forth and agreeing to meet up that evening for drinks, on Lucy's last night in town. A few (pretty bad) margaritas later, Lucy's cousins badger her to come home and play Settler's of Catan, and to just "bring your date, we have the expansion pack." Always up for a board game, Ryan agrees to meet the cousins, and impresses them all by bringing some good IPAs and winning 2nd place (Lucy wins 1st, of course). The rest is, well, history. Within a few months, Ryan agreed to move to San Francisco, and Lucy agreed to let him.