About Matt and Sienna

Matt and Sienna have been together since February of 2007, and have been engaged since June 25, 2008. Matt works at a small technical company in Denver, and Sienna is working on a PhD in Historical Musicology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

We opted for a long engagement mostly out of laziness and Sienna's deep aversion to event-planning, but also for more practical reasons like saving money, finding a great location, and working out our philosophy about weddings and (more importantly) marriage.

Our Wedding Philosophy

We're pretty non-traditional when it comes to weddings. Our rings are a great example of this: they are titanium inlaid with gold and platinum bands. Sienna didn't want a diamond because she finds them uncomfortable and impractical to wear, and because she doesn't believe that the value of her ring has anything to do with the value of her relationship. Matt wears a matching ring on a chain around his neck.

We are not religious, so there are several marriage traditions that are meaningless to us. On the other hand, there are several elements of traditional weddings that we do find valuable: the symbolism of the rings, the coming together of two families, and the public oath-taking.

We also believe that being serious about the commitment that we will make to each other warrants a certain gravity in our ceremony... but we don't believe that this is the same as formality. We would never go to Vegas and elope in a ceremony officiated by Elvis, but we want our wedding to be a celebration, and excessive formality gets in the way of that.