CD & Mary are inspired by solar and lunar themes and have multiple engagement rings that represent them. In the lead-up to the wedding, they will wear one another’s rings to charge them up with love.
How long have you been together, and how did you meet?
We met on a dating app where we chatted for a while until it became clear that one of us needed to ask the other out, at which point Mary chickened out and ghosted CD. However, a month later, on New Year’s 2018 (after thinking about Mary constantly), CD gave Mary a second chance by messaging her, “Happy New Year! Did you celebrate?” and Mary finally did ask her to meet up.
On our first date, we discovered that CD had a tattoo of the moon’s phases, which matched a sweater Mary had designed and was knitting, with the same motif around the shoulders. This was just one of many coincidences that could only mean we had been looking for each other for a long time, and Mary knew almost instantly that CD would be her person in this life. It’s been three and a half years, and we’ve been inseparable ever since, falling deeply in love and learning and growing and only becoming more patient and tender with one another.
Tell us about the planning process for the proposal.
Early in the relationship, we started going to a local izakaya restaurant on Sundays to sit down, talk, and review our schedule for the upcoming week. In these conversations, a little over a year into our relationship, we first discussed marriage. CD mainly was ambivalent, but Mary wanted to get married someday, and CD could get pretty excited about hosting a wedding with our loved ones. So we hashed out the details: CD would be the one to propose because a proposal was important to Mary, and CD hates surprises and is picky about jewelry.
Almost two years later, when CD lost her job during the pandemic, we discussed the possibility of a quick courthouse elopement for insurance purposes. CD bought an “emergency engagement ring” so that she could give Mary the proposal she wanted even if our marriage wouldn’t be the picture of romance. CD had it shipped to our neighbor and secreted it into the house. That first ring was bought in a rush, and it wasn’t perfect, so CD kept looking. The next ring was also beautiful, but she still felt like she could do better. Finally, CD figured out her health insurance but kept looking at engagement rings. CD bought six engagement rings for ten months – the last one was her favorite, a simple vintage opal bordered by small diamonds.
You have multiple engagement rings, tell us about that.
Just as exciting to us as the collection of engagement rings are our future wedding bands.
CD was going to be the picky one when selecting the ring she would wear every day. She started searching almost immediately after the proposal, thinking it might take ages to find something perfect. At the start of her search, I thought about an idea we discussed when we were still just talking about a future engagement: matching tattoos.
Mary and CD identify strongly with solar and lunar aspects. Mary is the sun, and CD is the moon in our relationships, and we share that energy between us. CD calls Mary “sunshine” and Mary calls CD “moonbeam,” so when I found a local artist who had created stunning celestial wedding bands, we were sold even if that meant that Mary now had a 7th ring!
After finding these, CD had to decide: was this her wedding band, or did she wear it for the length of the engagement as well? If she wore it now, was the moment that we put on our rings during the ceremony less special? Were we going to take off our rings in the morning and give them to someone else? We discussed the options when it came to us: we would exchange rings. We both wear the same ring size, so, until the ceremony, we are wearing one another’s rings (CD is wearing Mary’s moon ring, and Mary is wearing CD’s sun ring). This way, we can spend the next year charging up these rings with our love and our light, so when we exchange them at our wedding, we are carrying more than just the symbol of our beloved.
What does your engagement mean to you both? Has anything changed?
For us, nothing has changed since our engagement except wedding planning. We are partners in everything, and to us, an engagement and a marriage are just extensions of the commitment that we make every day to love one another.
Mary was the first one of us to say “I love you,” but CD was right there with her. But the most memorable part of that conversation to us was that we immediately took a moment to clarify what that meant to us. In our relationship, love is an action and a promise: to adore, cherish, and care for one another. Both of us acknowledge the privilege of finding someone who is open to the intimacy of identifying and defining these feelings!
How is wedding planning going? What do you hope for your wedding to be like?
CD adores wedding planning. She’s a big fan of a spreadsheet, a mood board, and a plan. All of this is in service to a party where all of her loved ones will gather to watch her be in love? Nothing could be better.
We started wedding planning with a handful of essential questions to ourselves:
- Why are we having a wedding?
- What adjectives should describe the feel of our wedding?
- What are the moments that are going to create that feeling? How can we use our budget to reflect that feeling?
- What do we want to remember after our wedding – the next week, the next year, years from now? What do we want our guests to think after our wedding?
These questions have helped ground us and make sure that we’re being honest to an experience that will bring us the maximum amount of joy.
How are you going about choosing your key vendors?
Our first vendor was our photographer, Beth Olsen of Twisted Aisle Weddings. A good photographer was essential to have someone to capture the moment for us.
Every year on our anniversary, we sit down together and look at our best photos of one another and selfies together – and we wanted to have wedding photos that we can look back on once we have a new anniversary! Neither of us is entirely at ease in front of a camera, so finding someone to help us relax took time. Beth sat down with us before we even booked our engagement shoot and was immediately such a pleasure to work with. She made us feel beautiful, special, and very in love – which we think reflects in our photos.
Picking a venue came next for us. We started with a tentative guest list to get a sense of how big we wanted the wedding to be, then started touring. We visited seven locations, and each one helped us adjust our expectations until we toured Camp Colton in Colton, OR, and fell absolutely in love. Immediately next was a florist, and everything else will fall into place!
Photography by Twisted Aisle Weddings
