Friends!

Jared Anderson

At age five, Jacob's brother Jared liked to stand on one foot and lean over with his arms out like an airplane when he was being photographed. Now he is a junior in high school, and seems to be always up for anything. He'd probably love to play croquet with you after the ceremony.


Stefanie Johnston
"Always a good choice"

Having Stefanie as a sister is one of the greatest gifts in Emily's life. Stefanie is independent and adventurous, and currently lives with a houseful of Argentine women in Buenos Aires. She is a sensitive photographer, a thoughtful writer, and a loyal friend. Emily is always happy to be doing anything with Stefanie (especially talking late into the night).


Matt Anderson

Matt is Jacob's brother with long curly brown hair who lives in Southern California and runs a neighborhood community center and after school tutoring program. In his spare time he enjoys fishing. When he was little Matt was assigned the clothing color red. He and Tim will wear near-identical clothing at the wedding.


Tim Anderson

Tim is Jacob's brother with long curly brown hair who lives in Southern California and runs a neighborhood community center and after school tutoring program. In his spare time he enjoys fishing. When he was little Tim was assigned the clothing color blue. He and Matt will wear near-identical clothing at the wedding.



Philip Johnston

Always perfecting the art of living on this earth with both a great mind and a big heart, Emily's brother Phil has a photographic memory, loves picking apricots, digging up ancient artifacts in the Middle East (he's in Israel right now), and talking with you about almost anything. If Emily could be anywhere with Phil right now, she would be drinking coffee in a distant, dusty city contemplating life from a new geographical perspective.



Lenine Sanchez-Tapia
“Dança! Dança! Dança!”

Leno has been Jacob, Matt, Tim, and Jared's brother since 1998, and is one of the best things to ever happen to the Anderson family. He says he likes football, but we've never seen him actually watching it, just some sport with a round ball and no helmets, usually played by a team wearing yellow, green, and blue.


Elizabeth Roberts

Having a friend who is also a francophile/phone has been a great gift for Emily as she's lived far from home. Elizabeth and Emily have roomed together, cooked together (Beth's spinach quiche is one of Emily's favorites), ridden trains, laughed at themselves, cried at themselves, and they wouldn't have it any other way. Emily can't wait for Elizabeth to get back from her grad program in France--though she's glad Elizabeth gets to be there!


Micah Barber

Jacob's longest running roommate--they've lived together in Fischer, the Ranch, the New Ranch, Santa Barbara, Humboldt Park, a car in L.A., and probably a tent or two. Micah's singing and piano playing are the sound track to the last 8 years of Jacob's life.


Katie Austin

The creative mind and hand behind our invitation drawings! Katie and Emily met and timidly became friends huddling under a shared blanket on a boat bumping across Lake Michigan. In the 8 years since, Katie's constant friendship and deep care for people have made a deep impression in Emily's life. Katie is the mother of Olive "Cute-as-a-Button" Austin and shares with Emily a love for a (different) man named Jacob.



Ryan Rogers

What are the odds that two boys born two states away within tewnty days of each other would be friends for twenty years (through swim team, Awana, prom, college dorms) and within two months time marry two best friends? (Answer: one in two million billion!)

Kate Johnson

Kate introduced herself to Emily in their first 30 minutes at Wheaton College and has been an encouraging friend and motivator ever since. In the first 3 days of her summer in Paris with Emily's family, Kate found the classifieds, aced several phone interviews (in her non-native French), and landed a summer job all before getting over jet-lag! Kate loves the color green and Ryan Rogers.


Kyler Mulhauser

Jacob's roommate this last year. Kyler is a meticulous coffee maker, always ready with the half & half. If we could put Kyler through a duplicator and have him stand with each of our wedding parties, we would!


Laura Wetter
"Dance! Dance! Dance!"

Laura's ideal invention would be an "intentions communicator button" to wear on her shoulder. Fellow Art student, roommate, and inspiration to Emily. A keen observer of life, Laura can tell a 10 minute story in 10 perfect words.

Karen Teune

Karen is an actor, adventurer, and incorrigible idealist. Karen's been Emily's biggest gulp of fresh air through many endless nights of art making, one endless summer, and several long journeys across the country. Lately she's brimming with tales from China and New York.


Mei-Mei Edgar

Emily is Mei-Mei's lucky Godmother and loves her very much!

What Has Baytown To Do With Paris?

Our hometowns could hardly be more different: Jacob grew up in Baytown, Texas, which is just outside Houston, an hour inland from the Gulf of Mexico, near the Louisiana border; Emily grew up in Paris, France, which is, well, Paris. Jacob's backyard is one of the largest concentrations of oil refineries in the world; Emily's is the Luxembourg Garden, home to the French Senate; Jacob fondly remembers sticky hot summer mornings riding bikes with his brothers to the bowling alley, and stopping on the way back for a snow-cone or Big Gulp from the corner gas station; Emily remembers rollerblading with difficulty over cobblestones, sitting in smoky cafes on rainy mornings, and dipping buttered bread into hot chocolate.

How do these two people, how did we, with such dissimilar geographical upbringings, meet and fall in love? Put simply, we went to the same college. But we also credit the stories of King David and Esther, and the words of Jesus, which we both heard as children, and still tell to each other today. We both credit feeling free as children--to be interested in reading (we just this minute found out that we both loved Nancy Drew!) and drawing, or whatever we liked--which would lead us to writing and photography. We can credit a post-college book club, jokingly and accurately referred to as a dating club. Emily's annoyance with rush-hour traffic on the Eisenhower, which led to more and longer dinners at Jacob's apartment. A shared urge to tell meaningful stories, through words and images, leading us travel to Athens, Greece, last summer to document the sex trafficking industry. Our love of cooking together.

Whatever other inscrutable factors in our joining together, we look forward to celebrating the mysteries and complexities of our previous, separate lives, and all the possibilities of our new life together.

p.s. For some internet fun, we present Wikipedia Challenge, a Seven-Degrees-to-Kevin-Bacon-type game where participants compete to find the shortest Wiki-link distance between two Wikipedia entries. Today's challenge: the entry entitled Oil Refinery to the entry for Luxembourg Garden, or Jardin du Luxembourg. Fewest clicks wins. I did it in four.

Eighty eight days...

The One Hundred Day countdown is officially on.

A string of little dated envelopes Jacob strung across my fireplace twelve days ago is down to eighty eight little white rectangles, each dangling impatiently from its paperclip. I never thought that as a 25 year old I'd be so obsessively counting down the days to something. The last time may have been my ninth birthday!

Needless to say, we can't wait to see all of you in July! In anticipation of your travels, we've added a few hotel suggestions for those of you who'd like to make your arrangements (see "Where to Stay?" in the far right column).

Oh boy, 45 minutes to go 'til the 87 day mark... I should get some sleep!

(Photo by David Wittig)

"How's Emily's Hand Like a Lemon Pie?"

"It's got meringue on it!"

On Saturday, January 13, I secretly canceled Emily's 8am breakfast appointment, and woke her at 7 (much to her confusion) to "tell her stories"--moments and memories from our time together, like camping with friends last May, watching her as she took photographs in Athens this summer, reading aloud from the novel You Shall Know Our Velocity! with her brother and sister at Thanksgiving. Emily says it was about halfway through the stories, as she began to notice their chronological progression through the months and seasons of our relationship, and as she became more fully awake, that she began to wonder exactly why I was there. Was it really just to tell her stories? But she quickly reprimanded herself for getting her hopes up, because she "knew" I didn't have a ring. But when she sat up on her bed and realized I was kneeling beside her, fumbling with something in my pocket...

Last year Jarissa, one of my first graders, six years old going on seventeen, beckoned me over with her little index finger to where she was standing on the third step outside St. Sylvester school.
--Mr. Anderson, do you want to get married someday?
--To you?
--No, to someone else.
--Well, probably.
--Okay, here's what you do (leans forward and lowers her voice): Make her laugh, make her smile, send her flowers, and... just do nice things with her. And then after a while, you buy her a beautiful ring, and...
--And then we're married?
--No, then you're engaged.

...then began a joyful day of announcements, by phone and in person, at the end of which Emily and I were too exhausted to do anything but sit on a couch and watch a movie--something we almost never do.

We will be married in Racine, Wisconsin, on Friday, July 20, 2007.