These two are super excited to get married!

We met through a mutual friend of ours while we were all working in the marketing department for Summerfest. Eating lunch together as a group every day of the festival led to Erik asking Sydonia about the story behind her tattoos (which he says is a conversation he doesn't even remember happening now, he was just trying to find something so that they could keep talking) and Sydonia sticking around in the office even after all of her photo editing was done in order to keep hanging out. We had our first date the day after Summerfest ended, which included us both falling asleep while watching "Serenity" because we were so exhausted from all of our work during the festival. Sydonia still has yet to finish the end of "Serenity," but we have watched all of "Firefly" together, and eventually would go on to name our dear cat Malcolm - Mal for short - after the main character. Three days after that first date, while texting late at night after Sydonia returned home from a theatre rehearsal, Sydonia complained about how hungry she was. Erik immediately responded with "Do you want to make pancakes?" and then proceeded to come over and make chocolate chip pancakes for the both of us. This one simple yet extremely thoughtful action started a beautiful trend of small kindnesses that we've carried through our entire relationship.

Our engagement story didn't follow a very typical storyline. Sydonia proposed first, while we were visiting Portland to scope it out as a potential place to live someday. She meant to ask while they were in the Portland Japanese Garden, but nerves got the best of her. She ended up asking, very uneloquently, while they were sitting the the International Rose Test Garden, which is right next door. Erik responded that yes, of course he would marry her - but wanted to get a ring before anything was made official. Jump forward to July, when we decided to spend the first part of the day at Kohler-Andrae State Park, walking the dunes and having a picnic and reading on the beach. As we were walking on the dunes, we took a break on a bench to take a look at the view all around us. While sitting there, Erik said he made a card for Sydonia for their anniversary. At the bottom of the card, he also asked her to marry him. Saying absolutely, a beautiful ring was brought out, and we were officially engaged! That day at the park was so beautiful, and we both always wanted to get married outdoors, that we decided to choose Kohler-Andrae as our wedding location too!