Our story

The first date was, improbably, a dog walk. We met at a volunteer shelter and took out a dog named Colleen together, because apparently that's the kind of thing we thought constituted a date. For the first three or four of those, Chris wasn't sure there'd be another — and then, a couple of days later, a text would land from Amanda. What are you up to? Want to grab a drink? Amanda, wiser than Chris about most things, was taking her time. Chris kept showing up. Then there was a very specific night at a bar when we both looked up and realized we were excited to keep going — and we've been showing up for each other ever since.

Amanda grew up in Colorado, Chris in Indiana, and we'd both passed through Colorado before landing in New York — which explained a lot. We'd both arrived hungry for a lot more action than our hometowns had on offer, and the city was happy to oblige: a place full of people doing extremely New York things at all hours, and we were right there with them. Since then: four or five apartments, a pandemic, and a long stretch of long-distance — Chris bouncing between Atlanta and Santa Monica, Amanda in Boca Raton. Every apartment has been great, mostly because we've been doing it together.

These days we split our time between New York — home for seventeen years — and LA, where a lot of our favorite people now live. We love the city, but keep finding excuses to slip away somewhere quiet.

Chris does most of the cooking. Amanda does all of the cleaning. This is, we've been told, a very fair system. We throw late-night dance parties in the kitchen — Chris brings the enthusiasm, and Amanda's signature hitch step could carry any dance floor.

We're lifelong independent travelers, which mostly means we book our flights separately and meet up in whatever city we're supposed to be in. So far, we've always managed to find each other.

The dogs are a whole thing. We've been steadily adjacent to dogs for as long as we've been us — raising them, sitting them, rehoming them, loving them. There was Bandit, who we babysat, and who peed absolutely everywhere; we negotiated with him using cheese. And there was Eva, our sweet, sweet Pomeranian, who went everywhere with us and lived a wonderful life before cancer took her. Mona, our newest, feels like a younger, less well-behaved spirit of Eva — she chews on all of Daddy's things and is absolutely convinced Amanda is the most wonderful thing in the world. She is, unsurprisingly, the official flower girl.

As for the proposal: Amanda had long been skeptical of weddings, and Chris, who had always hoped for one, had quietly let the idea go. Then, a year and a half ago, just after a long trip to Egypt, Amanda surprised him at Christmas — she proposed. It was, as all of Amanda's best ideas tend to be, exactly right. Chris now gets to wear the engagement ring, a detail he enjoys enormously.

So this wedding is long, long overdue. We can't wait to celebrate with the friends and family who made these years what they were.

Cheers!