We eloped!!

Since meeting & becoming fast friends in 2010, then officially starting to date in 2015, our bond has only grown stronger with time. Constantly learning about the other person, building a commitment upon our deep trust, & becoming closer every day brings both of us immense joy! Together, we've celebrated accomplishments, laughed often, made the worthwhile effort to consistently spend time with each other, leaned on each other through tough times, & cherished great adventures we've experienced side-by-side & hand-in-hand. We're so happy to be able to celebrate this wonderful love with all of you who've played a part in getting us to this point in our lives!

Just under a year after graduating from our respective colleges & moving up to Madison, WI, together with our two beloved cats, Maxime & Molly, to embark on the next step in our journey, we spent a chilly late-winter's day exploring this still-new-to-us city of ours. Our date consisted of eating fried cheese curds & sampling beers at a local brewery (it's a Wisconsin thing -- one we've fully embraced), followed by taking a bundled-up stroll at a rocky beach across the lake from the capitol. This was where Nate knelt in the cold sand & surprised Sara by asking her to be his for the rest of our lives! Teary-eyed & beaming, we headed home to get out of the cold & into the warmth of each other's arms.

We held a private elopement ceremony in Spain near the end of the year; it was by a place we were staying called Casa Sol in Los Castillejos, a village nestled in the foothills of Andalusia overlooking Lake Viñuela. It was gorgeous, memorable, intimate, & altogether perfect, & perfectly "us," since we both love travel -- especially together -- & wanted to combine our love for each other with our love for seeing more of this beautiful world. Our whole trip to Spain was a combination of a holiday vacation (one that has been on our wish list for a long time... basically since we became friends in Spanish class, back in 2010!), our elopement, & what we consider to have been our honeymoon trip.

We arrived back home to the US just in time for a New Year's Eve concert in Chicago & a relaxing stay at a Chicago hotel to wrap up our elope-moon! Then, we drove back to Madison on the first day of 2020 with plans to head to the courthouse the next day, once they were open after the holiday (& once our jet-lag had passed). Sara arranged for a couple of work friends to accompany us as photographer & witnesses for our official city hall ceremony, so we could seal the deal & have it documented to share with family & friends later on. We went out for a fancy celebratory dinner & drinks afterwards to round out our first night as an "officially" married couple.