Covid is making doing anything tricky, and planning a wedding was especially so. We appreciate your patience and grace regarding the hard decisions we had to make. We decide to elope in secret on June 24, 2020 amid the worst of the pandemic. Our futures were uncertain, but what we did know was that we wanted to face it together. We decided to postpone our reception until the following year, when we hoped to be able to celebrate with everyone in person. Sadly, the pandemic dragged on. As we knew we'd be doing two events, we decided to incorporate a favorite yet forgotten wedding tradition, a handfasting, which was a valid yet temporary marriage, lasting only a year and a day. As this is no longer a legal practice (marriages are not allowed to be temporary) we altered the ceremony as best we could to suit today's laws while remaining true to the spirit of the ceremony. Another aspect of these handfasting marriages was that while it was recognized by the couple as a marriage, the family nor church would recognize them until a priest could be found to make it official. To keep this aspect of the tradition, and to give us a year of 'practice marriage' without outside stress, we planned to tell no one, not even our parents. Big secrets are hard to keep, and eventually we told our immediate families, but we swore them to secrecy, preferring to keep the surprise for all our guests as we continued with the traditional wedding event timeline. The one thing we were most concerned with, however, was that some of you might feel mislead or betrayed. It was always foremost in our minds to word our ceremony carefully so you might understand our choices, and the traditions we wanted to keep, and how we had to navigate the hellish year that was 2020. To include you all as much as possible while keeping you safe was our biggest concern and goal, and to that end we recorded our handfasting ceremony, and much of the ceremony words (especially the vows!) were repeated this year.

We have chosen to combine our family names of Rice and Ansley to create our own new blended family name of Rhyzley. Both of us went through the courts to legally change our names this past summer and fall. April also changed her middle name from 'Fawn Augst' to 'Faye', which is her mother's middle name. You are welcome to continue using 'April' if that's the name you know her by, but she intends to go by 'April Faye' or just 'Faye' moving forward. By the way, Rhyzley is pronounced like "wry" as in wry humor, something we both share. IE: using or expressing dry, especially mocking, humor.