NOTE: This was one of the few really old blog posts that I decided to bring over to the new website, as I think that it says a lot about who I am and what matters to me. This was originally posted on July 4, 2013!
It's funny. I just realized that it was almost five years ago that my husband and I were off on one of our big annual international adventures (we love to travel), this time visiting close friends of mine from grad school, who were living in Riga, Latvia at the time. I had recently begun to think about the possibility of leaving my normal job to start my own business, doing something that I was passionate about. As we traveled through Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tallin (Estonia) and Vilnius (Lithuania), Jason and I talked a lot about it, and by the time we arrived in Riga for the last part of our trip, it was definitely something at the forefront of my mind. Plus since we were visiting friends I had been to business school with, so had known me for many years, and who were living a non-normal/un-traditional life themselves, it was the perfect place and time to really talk about it. So, five years ago, Gretchen, Ken, Jason, and I talked about the feasibility of actually making a living marrying people. And then this morning, almost 400 weddings later, I had the HUGE honor of marrying Gretchen's sister and her wife, celebrating the truly beautiful family they had already created together.
What a rich and meaningful circle in only five years!