Hitched

Skateboards and weddings. While wedding gowns and half-pipes may seem at odds, for Hope and Kyle Reynolds, the two go hand in hand.

And though Kyle, 27--who's been skating since high school and now runs a skate shop and skate park for a living--wanted to leave the sport out of his wedding day, some things you can't control.

After all, skating brought the two together. The couple first met eight years ago at Portland's Skate Church, a funky facility in outer Northeast Portland that's equal parts Christian youth group and skate park. Hope, then a senior at Benson High, wasn't much of a skater and didn't regularly attend Skate Church's required ministerial service. But she went with a girlfriend to check out the scene in the spring of '95. It was there she first met Kyle, a skater as devout in his love for the ramps as for the big guy upstairs.

The two had friends in common and mingled somewhere between the half-pipes and the pulpit, and swapped numbers. It was a casual meeting, although Hope recalls that she was feeling pretty prophetic that day. "I knew I would marry him from the minute I met him," she says.

Despite the eventual truth in her vision, she'd have to wait eight years and two breakups before the big day.

The couple dated for a year before Hope
graduated from high school and left Portland for
college life in Eugene. Over time, the worlds of
P-Town and Duck Town became increasingly different, and they drifted apart. While Hope was hitting the books, Kyle--hardly your average, skateboarding slacker--was building a business. He was helping expand Cal's Pharmacy, the skate shop he'd been working at since he first picked up a board, and eventually helped build a skate park called the Department of Skateboarding.

Four years later, the two would meet up again when Hope was back in town. Before long, Kyle and Hope were hooked up again. Despite another break of about six months in '01, they talked about getting married.

And though Hope admits she was hoping Kyle would pop the question when her mom was in town at the end of last summer, Kyle knew he'd have to catch his anxious girlfriend off-guard before that visit. He planned an Aug. 13 dinner at the Pearl District's très trendy spot, Bluehour, and told Hope that some friends would join them for dinner. The friends were never invited.

Instead, Kyle wined and dined the unsuspecting Hope. After dinner, he took her to Montgomery Park (where they'd stopped for a moment on their first date), and the two got out of the car. Hope remembers that Kyle nearly blew his cover.

"His heart was beating so fast, I thought he was either breaking up with me or was going to propose," she says.

Kyle, of course, was proposing. And Hope, though initially speechless, said yes.

They planned and paid for the wedding themselves. To help finance the ceremony, Kyle sold some of his vintage skateboards online. John Humphries, one of the world's top skate photographers and a friend of Kyle's, said he'd take the couple's wedding photos--gratis. And when the couple was searching for reception spots, a friend mentioned that big-ass skate park.

Kyle thought his friend was joking. Yes, he loves skateboarding, but he didn't want it in his wedding. "I'm not like one of those 49ers fans that has to get married in the stadium," he says.

But when Hope started warming to the idea, he changed his mind. And so the couple, with help from family and friends, converted the 16,000-square-foot park into an elegant dining room. Half-pipes were transformed; skating platforms that normally hold dozens of sweaty skaters instead accommodated more than 100 guests.

And though plenty of skaters attended the reception, everyone, including the groom, left their boards at home.

WWeek 2015