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Vows

By STEPHANIE ROSENBAUM KLASSEN

Last November, Shaun Reed, 32, drove up a winding road in Ione, Calif. In the back of the vehicle, unperturbed by the journey to the old gold-rush town, rode a flop-eared, cocoa-colored goat. Mr. Reed was sure it was the perfect gift for Heidi and Randy Ilich, who he hoped would soon be his in-laws.

The night before, Mr. Reed, who had flown to California from his home in Colorado, had formally asked for the blessing of the Ilichs to marry their daughter Cassandra. He planned to propose a few months later, though, so he swore them to secrecy about his trip west.

Mr. Ilich had moved to California from Serbia as a teenager, and he and his wife had raised their two daughters, Cassandra and Sabrina, to be proud of their Serbian heritage. Offering a gift of livestock as a bride price, he had been told, is an old Serbian country tradition, so Mr. Reed’s four-footed travel partner was a lighthearted yet meaningful way of making sure the Ilichs knew he was committed to their daughter, even as they laughed over the bleating.

Mr. Reed figured the goat would soon be on the grill as part of the St. Archangel Michael’s Slava (Saint’s Day) festivities, an annual celebration, with friends and family, of the Ilich family’s patron saint. Instead, the goat became a family mascot.

Meanwhile, Ms. Ilich, 26, who was traveling elsewhere that weekend and knew nothing of Mr. Reed’s weekend trip, the gift, her parents’ blessing or any impending proposal, was wondering just when Mr. Reed was going to actually ask her to marry him.

She would have to wait, despite the fact that Mr. Reed, a mechanical engineer who works in Denver for the Bureau of Reclamation, and Ms. Ilich, who works in Evergreen, Colo., as a marketing manager for the DDC Group, a freight-processing outsourcing company, had been talking marriage almost since they met three years ago. And certainly since 2014, when they bought a house in Golden, Colo.

Mr. Reed is an accomplished rock climber who is known in climbing circles as a first ascensionist — someone who develops new lines, or routes, up a particular destination. According to Will Butler, his college friend and longtime climbing buddy, he is also “wonderfully quirky, an absolutely bighearted individual,” a guy who never minds being the goofy center of a good story.

The Kansas-born Mr. Reed spotted his first climbers while on a family trip to Colorado. His parents, Michael and Barbara Reed, found a climbing gym upon their return to their Overland Park home and soon realized their son had found his passion. When it came time to decide on a college, he applied to just one: the University of Colorado in Boulder, drawn by its outdoor opportunities as much as by its engineering program.

Ms. Ilich, who had danced with several local ballet companies as a teenager and once hoped to be a professional dancer, had discovered climbing while she was a student at Santa Clara University, where she received degrees in political science and French and German. Her interest in the sport grew when she took a job at a bank in Denver.

“She’s the girl who gets ready in 15 minutes and looks amazing,” said Catie Maurer, a friend of Ms. Ilich’s. “And Cassie has a sense of adventure like no one else. If she has a dream, she does it.”

It was rock climbing that brought the couple together in 2013. Although neither knew it at the time, Ms. Ilich and Mr. Reed had a mutual friend in Mr. Butler, the brother of the boyfriend of Ms. Ilich’s roommate. Ms. Ilich, newly single after the breakup of a long relationship, had been pushing herself to socialize after having recently moved to Boulder. So it was an easy decision to join a group of friends going to hear Mr. Butler moderate a talk with the well-known rock climber Tommy Caldwell at a local Patagonia store.

A happy hour followed, and as Ms. Ilich and Mr. Butler were catching up, Mr. Reed ambled up and joined the conversation. After making the introductions, Mr. Butler, who knew that Mr. Reed, too, had recently ended a serious relationship, eased himself away from the bar, leaving the two deep in conversation. Ms. Ilich remembers feeling an instant, undeniable frisson of attraction to the “tall, dark and handsome” climber.

On his part, Mr. Reed was attracted to the vivacious woman with the bright smile and long chestnut hair but decided, regretfully, that she was probably too young for him. He left without her number but tracked down Mr. Butler for “beta” (climber’s slang for information) later that night. He was happy to discover that she was single and only six years younger than himself.

They met for a casual first date at Movement, a local climbing gym. They barely completed three routes. Instead, they stayed rooted to the ground between the brightly studded walls, talking and talking.

Mr. Reed was used to being the brash one in the room, confident, easy to talk to. “Usually, I’m more braggy,” he said. “But everything out of that girl’s mouth was incredible. She was so humble, yet she’d done so much. She’d traveled so much, she spoke all these languages, she was even getting her pilot’s license.”

Mr. Reed had traveled the world as well, mostly in pursuit of rock- and ice-climbing adventures, including deepwater soloing off the cliffs of Majorca, where he would follow a high climb with a free fall of 50 feet or more into the ocean.

The more they talked, the more Ms. Ilich was taken by the lanky engineer with the warm hazel eyes and the ready grin. Here was a smart, caring man with the energy to keep up with her, who liked to work hard and climb harder, who loved the outdoors and was open about his dream of having a family.

For his part, he quickly warmed to her optimism and deep kindness. (Ms. Ilich volunteers with several organizations, including Operation Hope and Junior Achievement, with an emphasis on encouraging financial literacy.)

She “didn’t have a malicious bone in her body,” he said, and took genuine joy in other people’s good fortune. The closer they got, the more he felt that he could tell her anything. They were equals, “fire and fire personalities,” as Mr. Reed described them, sometimes passionately disagreeing but always talking it through.

They marveled at how each had been on the verge of leaving Boulder just a week before they met, yet had decided against it: Mr. Reed had turned down a senior engineering position in Las Vegas, and Ms. Ilich had put off a plan to return to Northern California to pursue a graduate degree. Instead, they were spending every weekend together in pursuit of epic outdoor adventures, and talking, idly, of the dream house they’d love to share up on the side of a mountain, with a view.

They were considering renting an apartment when Ms. Ilich, who made a habit of browsing the local real estate listings, stumbled upon a listing in Golden that seemed to match their dream house. Intense talks followed, about finances, values, their hopes for marriage and family. Eight months after meeting, they were homeowners.

“We never doubted us,” Ms. Ilich said, even if, at first, she was wary of buying a home without setting a wedding date. But Mr. Reed saw the purchase as a definitive commitment.

It was a decision that made it clear to both sets of parents that this was no casual rebound relationship.

Even in the beginning, Mr. Reed said, it felt as if they had been together for much longer than they had. “The trust is there, the communication is there,” he said. And climbing with Ms. Ilich has expanded his outlook on life, too: “She’s taught me to enjoy the experience, not just achieve a goal,” both on and off the mountains.

In the winter of 2016, flipping through the annual scrapbook of photos and mementos that Ms. Ilich put together each year, Mr. Reed came across a picture of them on Baker Beach in San Francisco, celebrating the purchase of their new house and Mr. Reed’s successful first ascent of the Unemployment Line route up Mount Broderick, in Yosemite Valley — an adventure that took months of training, and was sponsored by North Face and filmed as part of its “Train Smarter” video series.

“She looked so contented and happy,” Mr. Reed said. “I saw that picture, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to ask her to marry me on the beach.’”

In March, they planned to visit his grandmother Bonnie Reed, in Florida, followed by a week of sailing lessons in the Bahamas. The couple had a tradition of sharing a bottle of wine and watching the sunset from scenic places, so Ms. Ilich wasn’t surprised when, even after eight hours of sailing, Mr. Reed suggested they dress up, hop in the dinghy and row over for a “date night” on Tahiti Beach.

Four months after a little help from his four-legged friend, Mr. Reed, standing on the still-warm sand, dropped to one knee and proposed.

Once back home, as they began to plan an autumn wedding, Mr. Reed had another important question: Would Ms. Ilich take his name? Ms. Ilich agreed, with a proposal of her own: If she became Cassandra Reed, would he consider converting to her Serbian Orthodox faith?

As an adolescent, she had rebelled against its rigid and arbitrary-seeming strictures. But a new priest, the Rev. Steven Tumbas, had come to the family’s church, St. Sava in Jackson, Calif., during her teenage years. Father Tumbas had updated the services, bringing the church into a more modern era. It became an important part of her life, and of her future.

Mr. Reed had been brought up Protestant but had gone on his own spiritual quest during his 20s, studying Eastern religions and exploring other faiths and philosophies. Under Father Tumbas’s guidance, the couple began a course of study together. Three days before the wedding, Mr. Reed went through a ceremony of conversion at St. Sava, with both sets of parents in attendance.

On Sept. 24, as the afternoon temperature crept past 90 degrees, making the faint breezes welcome, family and friends gathered at Chateau Summerset, the Ilichs’ family home. Walking past rows of newly harvested grapevines and clusters of lavender, the guests strolled through silvery-leaved olive trees heavy with unripe fruit (the family runs a small olive-oil business) to arrive at a small gazebo perched on a rise, surrounded by panoramic views of the rolling, lion-colored Amador County hills.

A classical trio played, and the groomsmen came into sight, then the flower girls, bridesmaids and the ring bearer — none other than Tanner the goat, now a family mascot, wearing a garland of olive leaves with the rings tied at his neck. Father Tumbas, following a traditional liturgy in both Serbian and English, led the service.

As the 100 guests gathered for dinner and the sunset faded to a star-flecked indigo, Tanner the goat was being quietly shepherded down the driveway, heading back to his pasture on a warm, starry night, and the newly married Reeds knew their adventures would continue with the sunrise.