"Hey CaseeJo, it's going to snow in 2 weeks."

"What?! How do you know?"

"It's a Southern thing... 2 weeks after a thunderstorm in February it snows."

"No sweetie. I'm from Michigan. I feel snow in my bones. It's not going to happen."

"Want to bet on it?"

"Sure. And I'll even give you an extra week. So in three weeks, if it hasn't snowed, you buy me lunch."

He lost. It snowed 3 weeks and 1 day later.

Lunch turned into dinner- that turned into our first date (April 11, 2012), and we have been weird together ever since.

When we decided to elope, it just organically happened. We joked about getting married at VooDoo Donut, and thought "how fun would that be!" and then we thought "How fun WOULD that be?!" We looked into it, thought about how our immediate families would react to it, and decided we wanted to write our own story. We went "looking" for rings to see what we liked and ended up walking out with rings, and a deposit down on the donut shop. We called our friend Drew (Nick's chef from his Fern days) and his wife Tasha, who live outside of Seattle and asked if they would come to Portland for the day and be the witnesses for our marriage. It was so hard to keep our little secret, but we were so excited for this!

Once we landed in Portland, we had to sneak away from my family to get to the court house to get our license, and make sure we got it with enough time for the ceremony to happen on Friday (Multnomah County has a 3 day waiting period from the day you obtain your license to the actual ceremony). My parents told us later they thought we were getting engaged, and had hoped when we came back we would all celebrate. Little did they know....

The day of our wedding, we woke up like normal, drank our coffee, and then got ready in separate rooms (Nick did have to zip my dress though). We called an Uber (I forgot my earrings, and had to run back inside, without being seen), and off we went to Downtown Portland. We met our photographer- a friend of my cousin's- Anneka, took some pictures in the rain and as the sun was coming back out, cut in line at the donut shop to let them know we were there, and waited for Drew and Tasha to arrive.

We knew that stopping service at the busiest (and most popular) donut shop in Portland would either piss people off, or they would think it was cool they got to be a part of a VooDoo Wedding. Luckily they were all super excited for us. All of service stopped, back of house people came out to watch, and our Reverend wore a jester hat and carried a broom stick.

We got married under a a picture of Isaac Hayes, Rev. Wayne sprinkled a circle of sprinkles around us (and in my hair), the lights flashed when the VooDoo spirits approved of our union, and by the State of California and Jones Soda we were pronounced Husband and Wife. Simple as that. It took all of three and a half minutes.

After that, we drank and ate our way through downtown Portland with our good friends. We went back to the house we were renting for the week with a box that had a bride, groom, and heart shaped donuts. We placed the box in front of my mom and opened it up. She yelled and threw her hands up with so much happiness, hugged us both, and said "FINALLY!"

Through thick and thin; in VooDoo and sin... That's our story and we're sticking to it. ;)