Are Getting Married
Rooms at the Legacy Golf Resort: In order to get our guests an incredible discounted rate, we have already booked 22 double units (each sleeps up to 8) at a luxury golf resort located close to the venue and the airport for Friday and Saturday …
Date and Location: Please join us on December 29th, 2018 at Liberty Wildlife Rehabilitation Foundation located at 2600 E. Elwood St. in Phoenix, Arizona. Accommodations for out of town guests: We have booked rooms at the Legacy Golf Resort at an extremely discounted rate. We encourage …
The Officiant: Emily Dykstra Emily Dykstra and Wendy met in 2006 in the Cordes lab at the University of Arizona. It didn’t take long for these two delightfully strange ladies to realize that they had a lot of fun ahead of them. From the bench …
Chris and Wendy fell in love at first dance in October 2014.
Like ships passing in the night, Chris and Wendy knew vaguely of each other and had met briefly years before at the University of Arizona where Chris was working on his PhD and Wendy was studying as an undergraduate. However, the timing wasn’t right and the two never really connected. It wasn’t until Chris’ lab mate and groomsman, Tom Hartl, married Wendy’s lab mate and bridesmaid, Sarah Liller, in San Francisco that the two encountered each other in a new light. On the dance floor at the “Chicken Shack”, Chris and Wendy boogied, literal-danced, and slow danced their way into each other’s hearts.
“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” ~ Dr. Seuss
Christopher Randal Bauer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and grew up in sunny Bradenton, Florida. He spent his childhood running around Braden Woods catching critters and industriously reselling scavenged golf balls. Chris was clever but free spirited and went to undergrad at New College of Florida where shoes were optional but the Biochemistry training was rigorous.
The Proposal ~ It was on the New College campus in front of the gleaming Georgian pink marble mansion built by Charles Ringling (of circus fame) that Chris got down on one knee and ask Wendy to marry him. She said yes and agreed that anywhere that they are together, feels like home.
After graduation from New College, Chris moved to Tucson, Arizona to pursue a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Arizona. This is where he met the bulk of his groomsmen, the gentlemen of so-called “JMST”. Upon the speedy acquisition of his PhD, he moved on to the big apple, New York City, conducting cutting edge genetic research at NYU. It was at the tail end of this postdoc that a fateful trip to a wedding in SF would change his plans forever.
Wendy Marie Ingram was born and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona and grew up on a 2.25 acre lot, teaming with animals. She shared her home with a snake, a Cocker Spaniel, a pony, a donkey, 5 English Mastiffs, upwards of 15 llamas, many dozens of goats, hundreds of birds, and the periodic Gila Monster. While some of these were pets, many were transient or permanent residents of the wildlife rehabilitation foundation, Liberty Wildlife, which operated out of her mother’s back yard until 2016.
The Venue ~ Wendy is ecstatic to have her wedding at the new forever-home of Liberty Wildlife and share the amazing treasures that she was blessed to grow up with with all of you.
Wendy went to University of Arizona (Bear Down!) to study Biochemistry and Psychology. She spent her Junior year abroad in Scotland where she developed her love of Celtic violin and Single Malt Scotch. It was during this time that Chris joined the graduate program at U of A and rotated in her research lab. He didn’t join the lab, leaving them to fall in love another time. Wendy then went on to earn her PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology studying brain-control parasites at the University of California Berkeley (Go Bears!), an achievement she celebrated by getting the Winged Victory, wrapped in a DNA double helix, tattooed on her left arm. Just as she was wrapping up her graduate work, she officiated a wedding that had a very special someone among the groomsmen’s ranks.
Wendy: “So who are the groomsmen?”
Sarah: “The guys from JMST, you know, Jay, Matt, Stretch, Mike, and Chris.”
Wendy: “Chris…is that the cute one?”
And so it finally began:
How They Met ~ Sarah and Tom’s wedding was what ultimately brought them together. They couldn’t stop talking and they couldn’t stop dancing.
When Chris left to go back to NYC, they kept talking on the phone. Chris finished his postdoc and Wendy wrapped up her PhD, then they met up in Thailand for a month (as you do). They picked out a house to rent in Danville, Pennsylvania and both got jobs studying the genetics of human diseases at Geisinger Health System. Wendy’s research focuses on medical informatics to study depression while Chris takes a broader more genetics-focused approach. They currently live in Baltimore, Maryland where Chris continues his exciting work for Geisinger and Wendy is training in Psychiatric Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University.
After completing their adventure of getting hitched, they’ll be interviewing for academic and/or industry jobs and off to who-knows-where! The most important thing for both of them is that they’ll be heading there together.
