Shon and I met because of a loud British post-punk band named IDLES. At the time, we didn’t really even understand how perfect it was, that they were about to release an album and a tour all about love. But I digress.
I met Shon in the loud, sweaty thrall of an IDLES concert.
We were Instagram acquaintances first, music scene colleagues from afar. He: a musician, podcaster, and photographer. Me: a music journalist turned band publicist turned author turned public relations lady for Meow Wolf. We like to look back fondly on the moment he asked me to do publicity for his podcast, and I shot him down like a PR bitch. The truth was, I was already fully employed, and I said so nicely, but when we revisit the memory, we like to play up the rejection factor for humor’s sake: “Not another man with a podcast.” All of this was to say that we didn’t really interact much. Then IDLES released Crawler.
I had seen him and some other music friends I respected post about the album, so I spent an entire weekend listening to this band and going through some cathartic solo ritual. I messaged Shon something calm and normal, like: “OH MY GOD, THIS FUCKING BAND. I WANT TO TATTOO THEM ON MY BODY.” It was the perfect doorway because it wasn’t a doorway at all, just two people geeking out about the same thing without trying to be impressive.
When IDLES came to Denver, I posted that I had two extra VIP tickets I was looking to sell. Unbeknownst to me, Shon already had a regular ticket, a photo pass, and a reviewer pass. Three tickets. One human. He bought one of mine so he could meet me. He gave me some bullshit excuse that he needed a spot to stash his camera equipment (like he would leave that alone).
That night, he bought my friend Shadows Gather and me a drink, we talked for a bit, and then he disappeared into the photo pit, giving me the perfect amount of an introduction to be compelling but mysterious.
Months later, he texted out of the blue: “What are you doing tomorrow?” Directness isn’t usually his Midwestern style, but something had shifted. He’d just returned from Milan, where he studied with fashion photographer Lindsay Adler, found himself in a flurry of fun nights out, and came home with an epiphany that he needed to carpe fucking diem.
I told him I’d be at a 21+ party night at Meow Wolf Denver and invited him to come. It was chaotic and colorful in a way that could make or break a date. I was leading a group of drag performers on a birthday tour through alien landscapes.
In my dating experience, I had gathered that a lot of people who go on dates like to be the center of attention. The focal point. They might even feel disrespected if they get pushed to the “behind-the-scenes” vantage. Amidst these drag performers, no one else could be the main character. But just like everything in our relationship that feels meant to be, it turns out that Shon has a passion for “behind the scenes.” It was even practically the name of his podcast; he loves seeing how the sausage is made, in any and all industries, and especially in “I can’t believe this is my job” types of careers where your main job is making sure the queens don’t trip on their Pleasers in the swamp world.
Before Meow Wolf Denver opened, I remember walking the vast, meandering paths of Numina back when it was empty, learning the lay of the land of this 90,000-square-foot behemoth so I could give media tours once it opened. With my headphones on, before the lighting or sound layers fully activated, it felt like I’d stumbled onto an alien planet alone.
Shon was a Meow Wolf fan long before I worked there. His entry point was Santa Fe. He once followed a mass exodus of artsy-looking people (as one does) and ended up at Zozobra. Someone there told him about House of Eternal Return. He went, and that was that.
Back in the Meow Wolf Denver party, we found a quiet moment in the Cosmohedron, or at least quiet in comparison: we were still surrounded by the otherworldly smacks and hums of the Numina soundscape, an imagined chorus that asks, “What would nature sound like on another planet?” In Meow Wolf lore, the Cosmohedron is what connects Numina to human life, like a portal. It’s like a spaceship with windows that bubble out and let the people sitting inside get a view of the entire swamp kingdom. Numina isn’t exactly a world; it’s a sixth-dimensional organism that’s operating on another frequency that humans can’t quite understand. Thanks to the portal of the Cosmohedron, humans can explore the rollicking swirls of pseudo-botanical flowers, creatures, and stars, but in exchange, Numina can study the humans that explore its nooks and crannies. One is never quite sure about the intentions of this evolved being-world. And it was in this place that Shon and I sat and learned more about each other, things that made me realize he was more than a handsome face. He was also a devoted parent. He was a real one. He was someone I could actually date. Not just run around weird parties with.
After the party ended and everyone left, we sat on the curb outside and talked for hours. I kissed him first. He rode off on his Triumph motorcycle like a cool dude.
At 39, divorced with two kids, I had given up on romantic love. My feminist punk persona has always been a little “too much” for some men and intoxicating for the wrong ones. I’d started to accept the idea that being fully understood was a luxury item I might not get in this lifetime. I had just moved in with my dear friend Sid Pink, and we had forged a strange little family where my kids showed their friends at school videos of the infamous Sid Pink, and told them, “That guy lives in my basement!”
After the madness of Meow Wolf, Shon asked me on a proper second date. We ate French food, walked to the Fluevog store so he could show me some shoes that would be perfect for Gogo Germaine.
We kissed outside of the closed Fluevog store so long that a security guard working the nighttime streets of downtown Denver came over to check on us. That winter, we fell in love in his downtown loft, trading long voice memos, sharing wine and “girlfriend snacks” (the “girl dinner” basics he would pick up and keep at his loft whenever I was around), and having meaningful relationship conversations in that philosophical way that lets you form a bond before the stakes are already a mile high.
One night, mid-kiss, I had the thought: Are we falling in love? Shon pulled back and looked at me like I’d said the quiet part out loud. Then he simply said, “Yes.”
We moved in together in 2023. And two years almost to the day after we met at that first IDLES concert, we saw them again at Mission Ballroom. This time, in the middle of the crowd, with friends and family around us, Shon got down on one knee and proposed.
I cried immediately and said, “Fuck yes.” A stranger handed us a celebratory joint.
So when it came time to decide where to get married, it made a strange kind of perfect sense that our wedding would be in a sixth-dimensional alien organism that knows all.
We got married at Meow Wolf Denver, inside Convergence Station, in Numina, where we had our first real date. My version of “walking down the aisle” was processing through the Cosmohedron, where we had our first deep talk, and down those winding stairs, with my kids and my nieces on either side of me, with lanterns that were supposed to play music. The music crapped out, and there was a veil fiasco that almost ruined the ceremony, but it was still magical.
We did the ceremony in public, among the crowds, on a busy day. I loved the idea that strangers would get folded into the moment. I wanted to be one of the surprises someone stumbled upon inside the multiverse. Not “a private event,” but a living scene. I wanted to be part of the art, part of someone’s story that day.
Before the ceremony, we took wedding photos with local fashion photographer Roxie, which meant we got to run all over the exhibition in full wedding attire and make a scene. We went everywhere. We even went onto the roof. It was cold enough that I was dragging my train through icy puddles, but we got the shot.
Before the ceremony, I had run to HELLOFOOD to get a can of wine. (Hey, it was my wedding day.) I walked into the cafe in my dress, and the entire room applauded. Not because they knew me; just because humans are occasionally sweet in a way that catches you off guard. After the ceremony, I went to the bathroom to fix my makeup, and a few women told me they’d just seen me get married in Numina and that it was beautiful. The reason most people have private weddings was the reason I really loved having a public one: a girls’ bathroom bonding moment.
The staff, my coworkers, were so wonderful and accommodating, which matters more than any aesthetic detail ever will. And after all was said and done, my only regret is that my coworkers had to sit through me and my family doing karaoke in Sips with a Z.
(Actually, no. I regret nothing.)
Check out:
- our gorgeous professional wedding photos by Roxie. I cannot stress how gorgeous these are, not because of us but because she is so talented and the environment was incredible.
- our reception photos mostly taken by 10 year olds on disposable cameras, but are surprisingly amazing, and:
- our ceremony photos.
Erin K. Barnes 