WEDDING GUIDE
‘JUST THE TWO OF US’ Aurora Harris and Shala Russell celebrated their love with an intimate elopement. By JENNY BLOCK Photos by NADINE BERNS | JUST LIKE HONEY Aurora Harris (l) and Shala Russell Aurora Harris and Shala Russell are one of those couples whose love seems to radiate a light that warms everyone around them. That light was present from the day they met, and it shined through on their wedding day, which was a big to-do for a party of two. Charleston, South Carolina, native Aurora, 33, is a regional director for Young Invincibles, a nonprofit organization mobilizing young people to create solutions for higher education, health care, jobs, and civic engagement. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from the College of Charleston. Shala, a 33-year-old Houston native, works in cloud-based network security and received her bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Houston-Downtown. The couple now lives in downtown Houston. They met on OkCupid in 2014. “I took her out to lunch and began having her volunteer at the Lesbian Health Initative, an organization 74
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I worked for at the time. She would hang out with me at events across the city and help me do community outreach to promote queer-friendly health fairs. I fell in love with her free spirit and creativity,” Aurora says. “Shala felt like home right after our first date. She is a free spirit and inspires me to live freely. We have been inseparable ever since.” The feeling was beyond mutual. “When I first met Aurora, she just had this inner light in her that made me want to get to know her more,” Shala says. “Her smile and her eyes just twinkle—unlike anyone I’ve known before. And her laugh! Aurora is hilarious. Her name fits her so well. She really spreads light, and to know her is to love her.” As queer feminists who didn’t come from families “with the healthiest romantic relationships,” neither Aurora not Shala thought marriage would ever be a possibility for them. “A year into dating, queer-rights activists won the fight for marriage equality. Suddenly, [the
dream of] marrying the love of my life became a reality,” Aurora remembers. “The day we heard about Obergefell v. Hodges, I remember waving a huge Pride flag around during a celebration in Discovery Green with her, and dancing the night away at Pearl Bar. It opened up possibilities and pushed us to unpack our feelings around marriage as an institution, and what it means to us.” This happy couple discovered that being queer and navigating who should propose to whom can be tricky. “We were always like, ‘We’re both pretty feminine, we both don’t like surprises, and we don’t like gendering things. We would say, ‘I love you. I want to be together for the rest of our lives,’” Aurora says. Shala would often casually ask Aurora to marry her, but Aurora thought she was joking. In 2019, they decided to “intentionally ask each other and do the thing,” Aurora says. “We chose a special day and proposed
