Wedding Party
Cathleen Huang
Maid of Honor
Cathleen and Sydney have been friends since their freshman year of high school. I first met Cat in marching band, and we quickly became friends. When we weren't spending all our time together at school or extracurriculars, we were facetiming for hours every night talking about everything and nothing. After graduating, we both went to the University of Michigan. Even though we were in different programs we tried (and mostly succeeded) to have one class per semester together. In the early COVID days, Cat was my #1 penpal; we stayed in touch almost exclusively by letter, and I still have all the letters she wrote me. In 2023 when Max and I were looking to move out of Tennessee, Cat encouraged us to move to Seattle because we would love it, and because I love her, we did. Fourteen years of friendship and counting has led us to now!
Apollo Schafer
Best Man
Max and Apollo met at the beginning of freshman year at Michigan and quickly became best friends. That year included countless trips to Pancheros, football tailgates, studying at the fraternity house, and making Taco Bell runs. The years following would include living together twice, even more Taco Bell runs, two cross-country trips to go snowboarding, and hours upon hours hanging out. Even years out of college, we chat all the time over lunch breaks or over games, and find time to visit each other (which usually includes more Taco Bell runs). He's one of the best people I've met.
Alison Hennessy
Bridesmaid
Allie and Sydney met in middle school and became best friends in high school. Even though Allie and I went to different high schools, we were inseparable. I was at Allie's house basically every weekend for sleepovers where we would try to beat Rock Band (did not succeed until the night before we left for college), make elaborate music videos, and attempt (and fail) to pull all-nighters. We went to so many concerts together, including One Direction, Panic! at the Disco, and Miley Cyrus' Bangerz tour. During college we would try to visit each other on campus, but when came home during holidays and summer, it was as if no time had passed. As we've moved into adulthood and are no longer down the street from each other, I am always grateful for the moments we get to spend together, including when Allie surprised me by coming to Seattle for our proposal, or when I visit Michigan and we get to stay up late and gossip like the old days. We were (and always will be) the same 13-year-old besties having a sleepover.
Mallorie Norman
Groomswoman
Max's oldest friend and also his sister! Mallorie and I have almost three decades of memories and we keep making more every year. I remember making dances in the kitchen to countless songs, making forts whenever we could, and sleepovers on Christmas eve. She's the one who showed me what good music was as we'd drive around the UP in her black Grand Prix with no AC. We'd spend hours hunting for frogs in the pond, and she's the one who got me interested in reading after I'd pest her for what was happening in all the books she read! I remember when we had a sleepover the night before we left to move me to Ann Arbor for college, and we'll still stay up a little too late laughing and talking whenever we're together. I am so happy we grew up as siblings and have now grown into close friends as adults, and I couldn't have this day without her!
Kendall Billig Robertson
Bridesmaid
Kendall and Sydney met in 2016 when they were randomly assigned to be freshman year roommates. Kendall and I always joke that there was some divine intervention that knew we needed to be brought together because we just instantly became friends. We would hang out in our room and watch weird YouTube videos and have the most philosophical conversations and listen to the most depressing music. After our freshman year we stayed close, mostly texting each other all day every day about every thought we had. And divine intervention would bring us back together years later; Kendall had been living in Seattle for about 6 months when Max and I were considering moving out west, and now we live less than a mile away from each other <3
Mitchell Barron
Groomsman
Friends for over 20 years, Max and Mitch met in elementary school. We played basketball for years with Mitch's dad as the coach, playing travel basketball until we got to the JV team in early high school. Mitch and I were partners for every event in Science Olympiad, spending hours working on Rube Goldberg contraptions and often placing in the top three for every event we did. We even competed on Gladstone's robotics team together, making it all the way to the world tournament. We spent hundreds of hours playing Dungeons and Dragons before basketball practice and still carry that passion for games into adulthood. It's special to have a friend you've known for so long, and Mitch and I still find time to play games together even as both our families grow!
Cassidy Guros
Bridesmaid
Cassidy and Sydney met their freshman year at the University of Michigan through Model United Nations. Cassidy is one of the few people in my life where we met and I instantly knew we were always supposed to meet. We actually lived in the same building freshman year, but we did not meet until I joined MUNUM halfway through the year. We spent a week locked in the Michigan League, shepherding high schoolers into buses, and our friendship was quickly forged. For those not aware: running a MUN conference for high schoolers is incredibly rewarding and also a nightmare, and Cassidy was my rock through it all, including the 2 years we served on the executive board together. Our senior year, we dominated weekly trivia at Charley's. In the summer of 2020, we would sit on her porch 6 feet apart with to-go fishbowls and talk for hours (one of these instances was the day I told her she was my friend for life and would be in my wedding party if I ever got married).
Charlotte Strom
Groomsthem
Charlotte and Max met at a Key Club conference in high school and we'd spend hours with our group of friends at the Taco Bell in Esky. We were both on the regional board for the UP Key Club region, and bonded over music, movies, books, and everything in between. Over the years, I've spent hours hanging in the kitchen of their parents' house, visited them and Beans (the cutest cat alive) many times at the summer camp, showed them around Ann Arbor and Seattle, and discussed everything from climate change to religion to Shrek. She's one of those people you can talk about everything with. We regularly chat and keep in touch over the antics of our lives and always find time to facetime, and they still to this day have some of the best taste in music, art, and movies.
T.C. Knowles
Bridesmaid
T.C. and Sydney met their sophomore year of college when they both lived in the same building. T.C. and I would hang out at hall council events casually, and then we became much closer when we were both hired to be orientation leaders. In the summer of 2018 me, T.C., and Max became a little trio of orientation leaders and spent so much time in East Quad playing games and hanging out in the hallway (we all lived on the same floor). Then the three of us lived together from June 2020 to May 2021 and got to spend quarantine making dumb TikToks, eating homemade baguettes, and pretending we were at Epcot doing the "Drink Around the World". When Max and I moved to Tennessee, T.C. and I stayed in constant contact, always discussing our latest Letterboxd reviews, feelings about the state of the world, and opinions on anything we can think of.
Haley Massé
Groomswoman
Max and Haley met in their sophomore year at Michigan after joining Epsilon Eta, a professional org for environmentalists. We immediately became friends. We share such the same sense of humor and appreciation for the small things that there wasn't any way we wouldn't be friends. Ask anyone who knows the two of us and they'll say that wherever we go, you can tell we've arrived because you can hear our laughter first. In our senior year, we lived together with Roger, Apollo, and our friend Ben in a small house with one bathroom, and some of my favorite college memories came from that house. We've kept in touch over the years, always make time to visit each other, and have been with each other for many important moments like engagements and weddings! She is such a wonderful person and friend.
Charlotte Sahr
Bridesmaid
Carly and Sydney met in 2018 when Carly moved into Markley her freshman year. Carly was my resident my first year as an RA, and she lived directly across the hall from me (which now feels like fate considering there were 64 girls total in the hall). That year we spent countless nights studying and chatting in my room, shopping for plants, and dyeing my hair in the communal bathroom. After moving to Tennessee, Carly and I primarily stayed in touch through our weekly (often daily) Fortnite sessions (where, fun fact, Carly usually played as a character named Syd). Once our Fortnite fixation ended, we returned to more standard means of communication, including sending 8-minute-long voice messages venting when necessary.
Roger Teng
Groomsman
Max and Roger met the first week of college walking home from a rush event together. He and I became close friends during that first semester over our shared love of theater, and have spent the years since always staying in touch. We lived together twice in college and I have so many memories of the nights spent all over Ann Arbor. We'd take spontaneous runs with Apollo to get late night food, I'd see his shows he designed the costumes for (which were always amazing), and we were never strangers to our favorite local bars in town. Roger has impeccable taste in restaurants and cocktails, and is reliably always there for anything life brings.
Juan Orozco
Officiant
Sydney, Max, and Juan were all Resident Advisors in the same building in 2018. After spending a year wrangling the freshmen in Markley, playing hours and hours of DnD and Minecraft, and hanging out with the other RAs (shoutout Kayla and Hevhynn <3), the three grew very close. Juan is the absolute funniest person we have ever met, and with so many memories of love and laughing, we knew we were going to ask him to be a part of our wedding day. We are honored to have Juan as our officiant.