Making Love: Love Stories from the Makers at M & R Vol.2

In honor of Valentine's Day we asked some of our favorite Makers to tell us their love stories. We will be presenting their stories to you in a 3 part series we are calling Making Love: Love Stories from the Makers at M & R.  

Vol. 2 Outlaw Soaps

Launched on March 15, 2013, ( the ides of March) Outlaw Soaps is based in Oakland and made by hand by husband and wife team Russ and Danielle Vincent.  Since starting  Outlaw Soaps has been featured in VICE, Uncrate, Oprah.com,Fab.com, Cool Material, Thrillist, The Awesomer, and Urban Daddy.

To call these to a sassy-pants couple is un understatement.  You'll see...

The first time I met Russ, I thought he was an asshole. He thought I was a psychopath. It was at Burning Man.

I was trying to figure out who was playing Raffi's "Bananaphone" over and over at 5:00 in the morning. A dozen or so people identified Russ as the perpetrator, but when I went over to celebrate his excellent choice in music at around 10 that morning, he emphatically denied it.

He emphatically denied it because at 5:30 that morning, a woman who looked like me had come across the street and broke his CD in a fit of anger... and he (of course) assumed that I was coming back to further aggress on his fine music collection.

It wasn't really the best start to any relationship at all, let alone a romantic one.

Over the following eight years, he and I ran in the same circles. He dated several of my friends and I dated several of his friends. I don't think we ever were particularly romantically interested in each other. He seemed too wild for me and I seemed too social for him.

But then one New Year's Day, I was playing DJ of a hours-long Cracker (the band) marathon... we call it "Cracker Jack Hour(s)" because we listen to Cracker and drink Jack Daniels.

Jack Daniels is, as everyone knows, the elixir of many loving trysts... and we didn't connect at that time, but a few months later, I was having a housewarming party. It was a Hari Kari Carrie Oakie Karaoke party, which means that we flailed around a bloody room wielding in prom clothes and singing Oakie songs on my friend's professional karaoke system.

There was a lot of plastic sheeting involved.

that's us covered in blood at the housewarming party. If that doesn't look like love, I don't know what does.

He drove down from Oakland kind of on a whim. He texted me in the morning asking if he could come down and I replied something overly enthusiastic (as is my way), and he came down, and we had such an awesome time and ended up hooking up, which of course obviously went pretty well. ;-)

We had known each other about, what, like 8 years at that point? Something like that.

We had dated pretty much all the eligible people in our friend circle, so we joke around that we were statistically inevitable. I mean, there wasn't anyone else to date and I'd already pretty much started circling around again to people I had already dated.

Over the following months, we had this long distance relationship... It was clear that we were totally outstandingly in love with each other. I ultimately convinced him to sublet his place in Oakland and move down to live with me in our warehouse loft in LA.

About four months later, I decided to quit my job and move up to Oakland with him and start the soap business.... and the rest is history! :) We got married a couple months after I moved here (which is covered in greater detail here: http://offbeatbride.com/2013/11/san-francisco-outdoor-wedding).

I've never met anyone like him. I had spent my whole life with people who really genuinely loved me, but who loved me for reasons that I didn't particularly feel proud of (like stability). Russ was the first person who really cherished me for the reasons that I think I deserve to be cherished for... and I cherish him for the reason that HE deserves to be cherished too.

He's my best friend, my husband, and my business partner (in that order). It's such a crazy thing to have him in my life. Crazy beautiful. :)

So there's our story!

in love & cleanliness,

Danielle

Check out the Q & A we did with Danielle last spring read more..