Lisa Green and Amy-Sarah Marshall met four years ago, during the planning phase of Charlottesville’s first Cville Pride Festival, which Amy-Sarah founded. “I was a very happy single person, owned my own home and my dog and I had everything happily where I could find it,” says Lisa, a planning commissioner with the City of Charlottesville.
And so, as she began developing feelings for Amy-Sarah, she tried to fight them off. But “time marched on and I grew weak,” she admits. “[Amy-Sarah] and her two children moved in—completely turned my house and world upside-down.”
Says Amy-Sarah, “We had watched marriage equality come to Virginia, and then to the whole country, with great excitement for friends who had been waiting for decades to have the right to get legally hitched. But whenever the subject came up about us, Lisa was evasive, which I understood. When you haven’t had the option to do something for so long, you kind of learn to not want something you can’t have.”
But suddenly something clicked for Lisa. With one week before the fourth Pride Festival, she realized: “Marriage was more about verbalizing my commitment to Amy-Sarah before our friends, family and, yes, God. I wanted to let her know—not just assume she knew.”—Caite White
In their words
Lisa: So we are one week from the Pride Festival and I am the festival director, so I have a lot going on. I went to my favorite jeweler and asked her if she could do me the biggest favor of my life and make me a ring in one week. I begged!
Amy-Sarah: The morning of the fourth annual Pride Festival, I had the microphone on the stage at Lee Park and was about to welcome everyone to kick off the event when Lisa spontaneously asked if she could do it. “Sure,” I said. She began speaking—grabbed my hand—and it started dawning on me that she was talking about us and me, not the festival. She led me off the stage and walked me to the middle of the park.
L: I knew from the moment I stood in Lee Park on September 15, 2012, at 8:42am that Amy-Sarah was the one—and that was the place I asked her to stop the world from turning once more and to please marry me.
A-S: The morning of that first event, we hugged right in the middle of the park. That is exactly the spot where she dropped down on her knee (she had an X there that I hadn’t noticed!) and held up this gorgeous blue sapphire ring and asked me to marry her, practically knocking my rainbow socks off.
Lisa Green and Amy-Sarah Marshall were married at IX Art Park on June 20, 2016. It was the first LGBTQ wedding at the venue.
