Kim & Sarah

Kim grew up in Easton, Massachusetts until she won a no-smoking essay contest and used the money to go to Space Camp. Kim never ended up becoming an astronaut, but her parents used that week to find their new home in Melbourne, Florida. After high school, Kim escaped the flat, hot swamp for Duke University. After law school in Virginia, she knew she wanted return to North Carolina. She found her home in Greensboro at Brooks Pierce in 2013.

Sarah grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, where she attended Randolph School, learned the art of advocating for herself and others, and gained a valuable and apt nickname, "Sassy."  Around 2000, Sarah and her parents embarked on an adventure to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, where they stayed in a yurt and whitewater rafted.  Sarah decided then she'd move to North Carolina one day.  It turned out that day was two degrees from the University of Alabama later when she returned to North Carolina for law school at Wake Forest.  She's been happy here ever since.

First Met: May 2016

First Watermelon Milkshake: July 2016

First Time Kayaking: September 2017

First Motion Together: November 2017

First Trial: July 2018

First Brunch at Iron Hen: August 19, 2018

Officially Together: September 15, 2018

Engaged: July 20, 2019

Beat Cancer: September 18, 2019

Officially Married: March 21, 2020 (thanks, COVID!)

Official Wedding: November 13, 2021

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."

Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 2608, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015)

Courage - we recognize that words and actions matter,  so we strive to make the big stands and the little ones. We hope that by sharing some of our values and explaining why we're doing some of the things we're doing with this wedding, we can have our traditional day in an untraditional way.

As we plan our big day, we'll update this section to explain some of the choices we've made.

Inclusion - we value equity, inclusion, and dignity for all. Each of us has a multitude of things that make us unique. We respect and celebrate each and every difference, even if it is something new and unknown to us.

Inclusion means we're ditching remnants of patriarchy. The science, the law, and the lived experience of gender is complicated. Gender is not either/or. Gender is not the most important part of someone's identity.  We're shedding our ceremony and our marriage of gender requirements.  We're not "brides."  We're Sarah & Kim.  You're not a Mr. or a Ms. or a Mrs.--You're an incredibly important person to us, and we want to call you by your name.  We're ditching the honorifics in our invitations, to the initial horror of Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt.  

Inclusion means we want the celebration of our union to be accessible to you.  We make no assumption about your needs and understand that access needs occur on a spectrum, so we ask you to assess your own ability and ensure that folks with mobility needs have access to seating and premium parking.  If you need a sensory chill zone or a private bathroom, we will have a quiet lounge available during the reception.  The ceremony will be described for our friends with low vision, and we ask that you keep murmuring at bay to help our friends with low hearing attend.  If you have any specific needs, please let us know.

Sustainability - we love exploring our world and want future generations to have the same opportunities. We're not perfect, but we try to reduce our impact as often as we can. We recycle, we eat plants and sustainably-sourced fish, we reduce our waste and plastic whenever we can.

This means we're compromising on the invites. You'll still see a recycled paper invite in your mailbox, but expect your save-the-date, RSVP, etc. to be done right here.

Commitment - we embark in choosing to wed not to possess or own one other, not to lose ourselves in one another, but to commit to journey down this path of life together, to make each of us more perfectly our own selves.  We bring with us a lifetime of experiences which drew us together, and we dedicate ourselves to our own personal growth. We knowingly consent to sharing our hearts, as they exist today and as they will exist in the future, with one another.

Our marriage is being created through equality, mutual respect, and love.  We are the architects of our relationship, and we are committing to engineering and re-engineering a relationship that will continue to be grounded in our ethics.  Our rings serve as reminders to ourselves of our ethics as a couple that we continue to engineer: love, honesty, equality, respect, boundaries, commitment, curiosity, and understanding.

Presence - we believe in experiencing the here-and now.  To look backwards is nostalgia.  To look forwards is anxiety.  We want to experience each other right here, right now, as we truly are.  We value telling the truth as we experience it now, knowing each other and letting ourselves be known, knowing things may change tomorrow.

In our ceremony we will invite you to meditate with us, to bring love into the room and into our marriage, and to focus exclusively on that love.  These meditations will ground us, and you, to be fully present on that day.

As the world began to shut down, we knew we might have to delay our wedding. And we were okay with that if it meant getting to celebrate with as many of our family and friends as possible. But we did not want to delay making it "official" for another year. 

We broke the news to our families that we were going to get married in the eyes of the law, but that we would be celebrating our love in full scale at our wedding (whenever that could happen). We made it to the Register of Deeds on one of the last days the office was open for walk-ins to get their marriage license. On March 21, 2020, we threw  an iPad and some bubbly in a tote bag and headed down the street to Fisher Park. We found a perfect spot and were met by our friends, Dan and Hallie (with Joe Joe, age > 1) and Rayce Lamb, a friend and Reverend. We were joined on video chat by our parents, Kim's sister and her husband, and Jane Hull, our officiant. The dress was "quarantine casual."

Rayce and Jane both presided over a brief ceremony and we were so happy to be able to share a quick celebratory  socially-distanced drink with all. 

We have no plans to deprive anyone, including ourselves, of a full production with vows and Kleenex. And we certainly cannot wait to tear up the dance floor at the Cadillac Service Garage in November 2021! 

So keep those dancing shoes warmed up! Pictures of our one-of-many happy days below!