Erin Rainville, 28, and Kevin Nanzer, 29, first met in college at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but didn’t start dating until after college while she lived in San Francisco and he in Portland. On the Fourth of July, 2012, after a long-distance relationship kept them apart, Kevin didn’t so much as pop the question as…well, stewed.
“We had been out all day,” Erin explains. “We got home and I was in the kitchen and he was in the living room, and he started saying, ‘I’ve had this in my pocket for a while, but I didn’t know how to do it...And I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’”
When Erin turned around, Kevin was in the doorway holding an engagement ring.
“He said he’d been racking his brain for the best way to do it. He’d had the ring for a month.”
Fortunately, where to have the wedding wasn’t as perplexing.
“We knew we wanted to get out of California and have a destination wedding,” Erin says.
Hood River was one of Kevin’s favorite places, and after scoping out Springhouse Cellar, they knew it was the perfect spot.
When the wedding day came, just over a year after the proposal, a crowd of 120 friends and family members gathered, tucked amid the rustic walls of the winery and former cannery.
All eyes were on Erin when she met the crowd in a lace Jenny Packham V-neck gown with cap sleeves (Kate Middleton rocked the turquoise version last summer). But Erin’s thoughts were on those gathered.
“When I started walking down the aisle and saw everyone, all of them there for us, it was overwhelming,” Erin says. “I immediately started to cry.”
For the reception, Erin and Kevin wanted their guests to feel like they were part of a “really awesome dinner party,” with a focus on food that included local greens, duck confit tartlets and wine served at candlelit tables.
After the wedding, the two spent three weeks in Istanbul and Croatia to satisfy their cravings for good food and Erin’s “art history nerdiness.” They returned to San Francisco, where they now both live in the North of Panhandle neighborhood. Erin works as a physical therapist in Mountain View, and Kevin is an implementation manager at the online payment processing company Global Collect.
