“We met while we were both graduate students at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Caty and Leigh’s roommate, Brad, ran the USC Young Researchers Program (a program that offers inner-city high school students the opportunity to work with a PhD student mentor on a research project over the summer) and while working together they realized that they shared a common interest-rock climbing. Caty and Brad started climbing together and soon after Leigh joined in on a climbing trip to Echo Cliffs, a local climbing crag outside of Los Angeles, in January 2014. We hit it off pretty quickly sharing our loves of the mountains, science, soccer and dogs (aka Indigo).”

“In the early days of Fall 2017, the California temperatures began to drop meaning one thing: the end of the Idyllwild and Tahquitz climbing season! Excited to get a little climbing in, so Caty thought, I pushed for a weekend trip and multipitch climbing. The first route of the day was a three pitch, 300 foot trad climb. I led the climb and Caty followed cleaning the gear I placed in the rock. After Caty reached the top of the second pitch and was safely secured to the rock, I proposed 200 feet off the ground. Which left Caty little recourse as to how she answered my proposal. Excited and not wanting the day to end, we climbed several other routes which led to an epic hike out in the dark.”

“It was a lot of fun! The wedding weekend was amazing but very busy and it was nice to get a little time away with just the two of us. We were both quite nervous about the first look, but doing a it reduced our nerves for the ceremony itself which was great. There were a bunch of things at wedding that weren’t quite traditional in a wedding sense, so it was really nice to still incorporate the first look in our own way. Both of us agree that we would do the first look again.”

“Caty’s uncle’s family owns the Iron Horse Ranch next door to Eden West Ranch wedding. Caty has been visiting the ranch since she was a kid and would spend summers and holidays at the ranch with her family and cousins. We wanted to get married outdoors in the mountains and the ranch seemed perfect. The Iron Horse Ranch doesn’t have the infrastructure Eden West Ranch does for events, and so we decided to do a pre-wedding hike and rehearsal dinner BBQ at the Iron Horse Ranch and the wedding ceremony and reception at Eden West to make logistics of the wedding day itself easier.”

“Most of the planning process was pretty fun for us! We enjoyed thinking of how to add touches to the wedding that were very us (outdoor ceremony with a mountain/rustic/geology theme) and it was fun to have family and friends work with us the figure out the details. Everything from deciding how to intertwine events for the weekend (hiking, welcome BBQ, wedding ceremony & reception) to celebrate our marriage but also make sure we were able to spend time with friends and family that travelled across the world to be there. We had a lot of fun having blind wine tastings with family and friends to decide on what wine to serve at the wedding, developing our website, dress/suit shopping and writing vows (which ended up being surprisingly similar!). Leigh’s favorite part of wedding planning was developing the music playlists for all the events. The music planning process lead to many very fun late night kitchen dance sessions with Indigo.”

“It’s difficult to decide on the most memorable! Favorite moments were taking the bridal party and sunset photographs, literally successfully tying the knot during the ceremony, and the speeches. Our favorite aspect of the whole weekend was having our closest family and friends all together in the same location. It was surreal to have people from all aspects of our lives together and it was amazing to see how easily they got along and quickly became friends.”