October 26-27, 2024 | San Francisco, CA

Stella Shannon & Leo Shimonaka
together with their families
invite you to celebrate their marriage

The Bride

Born of poetry

Stella was born and raised in Missoula, Montana. She spent her Saturdays peddling pastries at the local Farmer’s market, building fairy houses, and reading, writing, and memorizing poems on the front porch with her sisters and parents.

Her world revolved around family meals, where she and her sisters would crowd around the kitchen table to slurp up spaghetti, roll out pizza, or ooh at mom’s lasagna while debating pop’s legal arguments.

Bred through these dinners, Stella’s interest in foreign language and the arts brought her to Yale where she met Leo while pursuing dual degrees in French Literature and International Security Studies.

Upon meeting Stella spring of Junior year, Leo didn’t quite know what to make of someone whose favorite things were “poetry and blueberries”. After a year of missed-connections they finally found their way to each other.

The Groom

A maker at heart

Leo reigns from Tokyo where he had an incessant knack for building things from the youngest age. He was famous (in his household of three) for fastening paper into a wide variety of gadgets and sculptures.

His rambunctious boarding-school, baggy-pants-youth tamed down when he began his Computer Science degree in college. Never having been by the book he spent his days at the rock climbing gym and “programming from the heart”.

And by the end of college, his heart led him too, to Stella.

With Stella, he learned how to make cookies from scratch at the ripe age of twenty-two and to call his parents more regularly. In turn, he showed Stella how to evenly cut onions with (near) Yoshio-san level craft, and pan-fry salmon — plated with (what might someday rival) Yumi-san level finesse.

Leo’s characteristic devotion and resolve carried him and Stella through long distance, building a life together in SF, and at last back to the hotel in Tokyo he frequented as a child, where he proposed in December 2022: the sweetest dessert course after an unforgettable family dinner.