Nathan & Rachel
WYOMING
WEDDINGS
FEATURE
Written by Kati Hime, Photography by BHP Imaging
W
hen you hear stories about couples being fixed
up by an outside source, you often hear about
parents, siblings or friends urging a couple
together…but in this case, it was the children that brought
Nathan and Rachel together.
“I had known Ashley and Emma for a while,” Rachel told
me when we met downstairs in her Laramie flower shop,
Poppy’s. Rachel was hard at work during Poppy’s first
Christmas (the shop opened April 1, 2011) when the girls
brought Rachel and Nathan, their father, together.
“I was working a job during the day, then in the evening,
I’d come downtown and work on Poppy’s,” Rachel said.
“Nathan and the girls (Ashley is now 11, Emma is 8) had
spent an evening, near Christmas, enjoying a sleigh ride
downtown. The girls came in to say hi to me, and they
hung out while Nathan went across the street to look at a
guitar.” Rachel and the girls put on aprons, she taught them
floral design tricks, and they explored the tunnels under-
7
neath downtown Laramie while they waited for their dad.
When he arrived, the girls weren’t ready to go. “They asked
me what I was going to do that evening,” Rachel smiled. “I
said, ‘Probably go home and eat dinner.’ They said, ‘Well,
we need to eat dinner too! Can we eat with you?’” Nathan
wasn’t sure that was the best idea – “We had never really
met before,” Rachel adds – but Rachel agreed and the
threesome joined her at her place that night for pizza, old
Christmas music, headband wars and looking at a collection of the girls’ funny quotes that Nathan keeps on a special Twitter feed. “It was a very special night,” Rachel said.
Their first official date came shortly afterward, when both
were alone for Christmas. “The only thing open was the
movie theater,” Rachel said. “So we went and watched The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – it wasn’t the best date movie,”
she added, laughing. The two started dating after that, the
girls becoming a solid item in their relationship. Poppy’s
continued to grow quickly, along with Rachel and Nathan’s
relationship.