The Shannons

Above: Kathleen, Jeremy, and Liz destroying a crossword puzzle during the Shannons' visit to Michigan last summer.

I first met Kathleen Shannon when I interned at an advertising agency in Oklahoma City. She was an art director with a jet-black mullet and a fearless wardrobe. I was a college student (with a shaved head and an art-school wardrobe, to complete the picture). I ended up working at the agency after college, and we worked tirelessly alongside each other for while before a real friendship started to form. (Kathleen has written somewhere that our early relationship was something like a balsamic reduction - bittersweet yet thick and slow-simmering. I like that.) 

But once we became close, we became inseparable. We met at that sweet spot in our late twenties, when we were just starting to grow into the women we are now, but still struggling to figure out our relationships, our strengths and dreams. I watched her fall in love with her husband Jeremy - then moved into their old apartment when they bought their fixer-upper historic home down the street. I remember watching them getting married in their living room by her side-show-performer brother, and thinking how untraditionally perfect their wedding was. Two years later I ended up buying a house a block away from theirs – it felt right to stay close. They hosted a weekly Wednesday dinner for our friend-circle that would inevitably bleed late into the night as we drank cheap wine and talked through our predictably dramatic relationship and life issues. I remember it being a Big Deal to bring Micah there for the first time (we had been dating for like a month at that point)! And we continued to work tirelessly next to each other in the creative department; she became a print-production guru, and I start to fall as much in love with writing as design.

Our friendship has only gotten stronger since I moved to North Carolina. Kathleen and Jeremy are some of the precious few to be invited to visit the cabin more than once, and I think they love it almost as much as I do. Micah started going to Wednesday night dinners regularly, and they lovingly coached him through the life-changing decision and process of moving across the country to be with me. I supported Kathleen as she skyrocketed into her freelance career, and when I was considering my own, she ended up hiring me. Once again we're working tirelessly next to each other – and it works as well as it ever has. I think we've always just been different enough to energize and inspire the other, but similar enough to still understand each other. And when she told me she was pregnant, I instantly became The #1 Most Excited Aunt Ever. Their son, Fox (my godson!) has her nose and his eyes and my heart. Oof.

Once we decided to elope, there was never really anyone else we considered to be our officiant. The idea of some stranger standing with us while we bound our lives to each other seemed weird and wrong. Shouldn't the officiant be someone who has seen you grow as a person, and as a couple? Who inspires you and continues to shape your path (and continues to forge their own path tirelessly beside you)?

So one morning, mere weeks after Fox was born, we Skyped with the entire Shannon family and asked them to join us in Asheville. We wanted Kathleen (now rocking platinum dreadlocks and a post-apocalyptic wardrobe) to be our officiant, Jeremy to stand with Micah as his best man, and fantastic Mr. Fox to be my man of honor. Besides our photographers, they would be the only witnesses to our wedding – and also make up the entirety of our "wedding party."

They said yes, of course. Who wouldn't want to be part of a mountain elopement where the bride and groom are totally cool with the ceremony stopping should the three-month-old man of honor need his diaper changed (or be breastfed by the officiant)?