Hi slays -- Cat here! 👋

Liz and I met in Honokaa, Hawaii, on January 14th, 2017. I remember because the day before was Friday the 13th, and I thought how laughable it was that on a day that was supposedly the unluckiest, I couldn't have felt more lucky as I found myself at 18 years old traveling to Hawaii. (Little did I realize just how true that was.) 🤭

I was taking my gap year after high school, and Liz was studying abroad during their final year at Texas Tech. I was to study with the "Farm to Table" internship program and Liz the "Organic Agriculture" program. We came to the same farm on the same island at the same time. 🤯

I had been there for one night when I met Liz. Nervous that the internship was fake, I told myself I would ask the first "real" person I met to be my tentmate - no way I was sharing a tent with someone not real. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I had come back from an afternoon exploring waterfalls on the farm's land when Liz stumbled up the steps, suitcase in hand, looking quite exhausted and spent from all the traveling. I immediately went up to them, introduced myself, and asked them to move in with me on Day 1 of knowing each other. 😏

Liz and I spent the following month and a half becoming great tentmates and even better friends. Halfway through our internship, the farm got a week off from work to travel, explore, rest, whatever we wanted to do. Liz and I decided to travel to Maui for the week -- just us. We called it our ⛺️"tentaversary"⛺️ and joked we were on our honeymoon to strangers.

We spent that week hitchhiking rides to the airport 👍, lounging in hot tubs 😌, camping beachside with fires 🔥, eating yummy food 🤤, sleeping in bushes 😴, renting mopeds 🏍️, escaping a flash flood at 1 am 😬, swimming with dolphins 🐬, and unbeknownst to us, falling really, truly, deeply in love. 🥹

The night we returned to that farm, not wanting the magic of Maui to leave us, we did the most magical thing of all - we told one another how we felt about each other, kissed for the first time, and the rest is our shared history. 🫶

That history involves a year and a half of long-distance traveling to one another, me in NC, Liz in TX, both of us living rent-free at our parents and having a good amount of spare change to fly back and forth to one another. It involved me dropping out of school, moving out to Colorado to be together with our precious Tig. We adopted our sweet Snert, moved to Wilmington together, found our baby Whit. There were new jobs, new friendships, a whole freaking pandemic, buying a house!, a slew of highs and lows, and a whole lot of life. 💯

Seven years later and I wouldn't have it any other way. 🥰

xoxo,

Cat

Registry