We're Getting Married!

We met on Thanksgiving 2017 at an open mic styled potluck hosted by friends in Denver, CO. Carson was newly single, Annie was ready to mingle. After about a couple of hours of passing each other among the dozens of people present, Annie noticed Carson and approached without hesitation. Carson was immediately struck by how engaging Annie was, how beautifully her green eyes sparkled in the light. Annie was smitten by Carson’s “je ne sais quoi”, his unmatched style and his openness to connect. We talked for a while and it was obvious that something was happening for both of us. We ended up snuggling and holding hands on a bean bag till late in the night when Annie insisted that we exchange contact info. A couple days later, Carson asked Annie to join him for dinner and the rest…led to this wedding!

When we started dating, we lived in different cities in Colorado. Annie was finishing her graduate degree in counseling and Carson had just landed a great new job in his industry. He was also invested in music, yoga training, and lots of travel. As a result of all of these life factors, we had to navigate a burgeoning relationship with life's callings. That did not stop us. We dove into a rich and loving connection filled with excitement and discovery of our mutual interests as well as learning about the qualities that made us uniquely us. After Annie graduated and moved to Denver, we deepened our love through a fairly full-tilt adventure schedule including good food, music, art, travel, and the outdoors. We also found that we shared a passion for learning about relationships and devoted ourselves to being in a healthy, vibrant relationship together, committed to each others growth and mutual wellbeing.

In July of 2019, Carson got an inexplicable urge to propose to Annie right before going on a camping trip to Yellowstone and The Grand Teton National Parks in Wyoming. He couldn’t find the perfect ring in such short notice, so he slyly found an adjustable souvenir ring at a gift shop in the park on their way to the geysers. “I’ll do it at Old Faithful,” he thought. Do what exactly? Turns out, what he’d eventually do is stammer clumsily through a poorly planned marriage proposal. Not the smooth operator he swears to be, just a sincere and snotty man tearfully asking THE Annie Vail to marry him at dusk as tourists walk away from the geyser’s last public eruption for the day. Annie had no idea this would happen at this timing, and honestly had no idea this was a proposal because Carson forgot to kneel and gave her some kind of $12 copper ring. In fact, all he was saying didn’t sound like a proposal at first. Until he finally remembered to ask, “will you be my wife?” Annie said yes! And we spent the rest of the camping trip processing what happened. Annie gave Carson another chance to propose on a pedestrian bridge crossing a raging river inlet to Jenny Lake in The Grand Teton National Park a few days later. He didn’t cry this time. He even kneeled. Nailed it. In the days following, we drove hundreds of miles through wilderness, got mercilessly bit by mosquitoes and flies, saw dozens of bears and their cubs, foxes, tens of thousands of bison, antelope, and elk, and stared into the deepest, darkest skies dappled with billions upon trillions of stars. This vast universe created all this and blessed us to be a part of it while planning out the rest of our trip and our lives together surrounded by a bunch of old maps in a tiny little tent.

Since the beginning of the relationship, Annie spoke of the possibility of moving back to Portland where she had established friendships long before meeting Carson. Together, we made numerous trips back during our first few years of dating. It didn't take too long to convince Carson. It was a difficult decision, as we both loved Colorado so much! But once we got engaged and realized how much our Portland community means to us, the decision to relocate to the Pacific Northwest became crystal clear. We are overjoyed to be here in connection with people who see and support us. Yet, the only way we have squared leaving Colorado is to name that on some level, we have two beautiful places to call home.

We toyed with the idea of eloping, given how much is involved in putting on a wedding. Yet, we knew how much we want to be witnessed by our community of friends and family. So after much fanfare in the initial planning processes, we finally solidified our venue just 6 months before the date. Now in a full-fledged planning flow, we are getting quite excited to share this weekend with you and to have you witness one of the biggest days of either of our lives. We hope you can be there! We choose marriage as a way of declaring our commitment to long-term relationship with each other. We both hold "Relationship as Path," in which our marriage is a container where we continue to support each others pursuit of personal, interpersonal, and spiritual growth and depth. Our connection is a safe haven from an intense external world. The container of the relationship allows us to root into each other as we build toward our individual and collective goals, exploring in our lives, from the subtle to the profound.