A Small Affair

By Lisa Arnett
August 2025 View more Better Together

Celebrating with a minimalist micro-wedding

Some couples go to premarital counseling to make sure they’re on the same page before tying the knot. Anna Ramos and Kris Schrader decided to renovate a condo together. From selecting materials to troubleshooting DIY snafus, “it was just like premarital counseling,” Ramos says, laughing. “While we were renovating, we learned a lot about how we handle conflict and how we compromise.” Schrader adds: “It taught us a lot about how we approach problems.”

Ramos and Schrader first met back in 2017 as undergraduate students at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. “We met on a dating app called Her, which is an app specifically for meeting other queer women,” says Schrader, who works at Discover Financial Services as a software engineer. Ramos is a business systems analyst at AbbVie.

They set a lunch date and ended up spending the rest of the day together. “Once we met in person, it felt like we had known each other for a long time,” Schrader says. As they balanced their respective class loads and part-time jobs, they stayed connected with study dates and video calls. “I always remember just being so encouraged by her,” Ramos says. “I had the perfect partner to help me through studying those long hours and I had someone to hold me accountable, to be there for me and with me.” Schrader says, “That’s what really grounded us to each other. We both felt like we were being each other’s rock.”

While renovating the aforementioned condo together, they both felt more and more ready to take their relationship to the next level. “I was so impressed by how much [Kris] was doing to make this house our home” Ramos says. “I felt like I could trust her with anything.”

After getting engaged, they weren’t in a rush to plan a wedding. “Partly because we didn’t know how we wanted to get married—what kind of party we wanted, what the ceremony would look like for us,” Schrader says. “As a queer couple, we felt like there was no standard, really, for what was expected of us…so in a way, it was very freeing that we could do whatever we wanted. But it was also really hard because we had to figure out: What does a wedding look like for us?”

They considered eloping. “We are typically very introverted people…so it was like: Are we really going to stand up there in front of our entire family?” Ramos says. “I think what really swayed us into having a small ceremony is the climate we are in right now. In the last year, with LGBT and queer people being targeted and talked about a lot, we didn’t want to take for granted that fact that we could legally get married…It pushed us to do a ceremony and a small party because we are lucky; we have such supportive family that have never turned their back on us or judged us or felt ashamed of us. It was something to celebrate.”

In the end, their dream celebration took shape thanks to Michelle Lytle and her wife, Robyn, who run Michelle Lytle Photography and The Lytle House, a Chicago event venue. “Michelle was offering engagement sessions and she took our pictures, and they are just beautiful,” Ramos says. “Then we saw that they were opening a venue in Downers Grove [called The Lytle Auditorium] and promoting micro-wedding packages, and we thought: This is just meant to be.” They loved the minimalist vibe of the concrete-floored, loft-like space, and “since they are also a LGBT couple, it felt very comfortable there, and we knew we would be accepted there,” Schrader says.

They recited their vows in front of 30 loved ones at their April 19 wedding. A food truck from one of their favorite Palatine restaurants, Tievoli Pizza Bar, baked artisanal pizzas onsite and served tiramisu and cannoli for dessert. Ramos and Schrader tapped their DIY talents to sew the fabric runners that decorated the tables, and they also put together simple floral arrangements with store-bought blooms. Because they had plans to hand-make their wedding bands on their honeymoon in Japan, they opted to exchange their engagement rings during the ceremony. On their 11-day trip, they visited Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka and designed their own rings during a jewelry-making workshop at Glänta, a boutique in Tokyo’s Omotesando neighborhood.

Shortly after their nuptials, these newlyweds celebrated another milestone. “Not many people know this, but me and Anna did our master’s degree together in management information systems,” Schrader says. “We took 90 percent of the same classes and graduated a month after our wedding.”

Photos: Michelle Lytle Photography