We first met at the glorious Sasquatch! Music Festival in eastern WA in May 2011 through mutual friends. After college, we dated other people, moved around, changed jobs several times, and sought our own adventures - but we stayed in touch through the years.
It wasn't until early 2017 that we met up for our first official "date" at Schilling Cider in Seattle. Ray was in town visiting family and friends and asked Suzanne if she wanted to catch up. Mere hours later we were already making plans to travel to New Orleans together for Jazz Fest. We were still living in different cities at the time (Suzanne in Seattle and Ray in Honolulu) so while we eagerly waited for Jazz Fest, Ray wrote Suzanne dozens (literally) of poems and we talked on the phone constantly. New Orleans was a truly magical trip and soon after Suzanne decided to visit Ray in Hawaii. Ray planned the most epic four-day trip that included swimming with dolphins, sky diving, camping, sunset hikes, early morning hikes, snorkeling, and scuba diving.
In the midst of all this romance, we were both accepted to Masters programs at the University of Washington for Fall 2017. After dating for just a few months, the long distance phase of our relationship ended and Ray moved from Hawaii into Suzanne's Seattle apartment - much to our friends' and families' surprise. Ray loved living with Suzanne so much that he convinced her to let him stay with her.
Our relationship continued to grow as we learned how to support and love each other while going through graduate school. We deepened our connection through hiking, backpacking, traveling all over the US, making playlists for each other, starting our record collection, talking about our future together, and caring for one another.
Our relationship has been defined by the ways in which we partner on big and little decisions - including our proposal, which was a joint effort! We proposed to each other at Cape Flattery on the Washington peninsula in March 2019, complete with rings we designed together!
We officially got married on June 14, 2020 in Suzanne's parents' backyard! It was an incredibly difficult decision to decide to get married without the vast majority of our family + friends physically present, but at a time when the entire world was upside down (still is), we decided we wanted to continue on with an intimate celebration of our love.
We officiated our own ceremony, rigged up a livestream, and had the most amazing day making the most out of incredibly challenging circumstances. Thank you to everyone for watching our livestream and for your notes/calls/texts/love that week - it meant the world to know you were still there with us. We could feel it!
We desperately missed you all there and we CAN'T WAIT to celebrate with you in person, at long last!!!