RYPers Reflect on Love and Life in the Rutland Region
Pro tip: If you wait until a few days after Valentine’s Day to get married, you can find great deals on flower arrangements - as long as you don’t have your heart set on roses.
Sorry, we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves.
Mid-February turns many people’s attention to love, and that’s certainly the case for the two of us: we’re Matt and Candice Britt, fairly recent Rutlanders and proud members of Rutland Young Professionals. Not only are we celebrating our third wedding anniversary today, but this is also one of the times of the year when we celebrate our growing love for this region which we’re now proud to call home.
Candice had a bit of a head start here - she first moved to Rutland in October 2015. She left her home state of North Carolina, where she was working as a registrar at a technical school, to blaze a new trail, letting a map of the Appalachian Trail be her initial guide. When she first arrived in the Green Mountains, she was an Assistant Innkeeper at a lodge in Killington. While Candice assisted with a number of weddings at the lodge, she started volunteering with RYP and quickly built a network of great friends. The friends that Candice made in the community are just some of the reasons she often says, “Rutland may not be her hometown, but it is her “heart town.”
Matt grew up about an hour away in Queensbury, New York, yet he spent the majority of his professional career in New York City. He initially started out in technical theatre and then as a production manager for an advertising agency representing Broadway shows, but after realizing he was missing grass and trees, he returned to upstate New York to start a new chapter.
“New Chapter” also happened to be Candice’s screen name on Match.com, which is where we found one another in the summer of 2016. The drive between an apartment in Rutland to an apartment in Glens Falls was 60 minutes in length, but went by a lot quicker and had far better scenery than a subway ride or Charlotte rush hour traffic. It was quickly apparent that we each had indeed met our match. In February of 2017, Candice moved to Glens Falls and we were engaged shortly thereafter.
As we made plans for our wedding, we also switched jobs and needed to move to a new apartment to be closer to them. When the time came to pack the U-Haul, it was a group of friends from Rutland who drove an hour to help us load up and then drove almost two hours back after helping us get settled, but not before Candice fed everyone. Those are good friends. The same group made the trip to Charlotte for our 02.18.2018 wedding - where we had the party of the century, complete with a karaoke wedding reception.
In the months that followed our wedding, we spent a good deal of time discussing where we wanted to call home. After the impression the community initially left on us, Rutland was always in the running. In the summer of 2018, we entered Green Mountain Power’s Innovation Home Contest, and were ultimately selected as a runner-up. As part of that, GMP offered us a generous grant towards the purchase of a home in Rutland City within a year, and we got to experience the positive benefits of the Rutland Red Carpet program for those who are looking to relocate to the Rutland Region.
While in our hotel room in Florence on our honeymoon (delayed until our one-year anniversary), we got a Facebook notification. One of those previously mentioned good friends from Rutland, Will, sent us a real estate listing for a house in Rutland. That was the moment when we really made the decision to put down our roots here in Rutland. Within a few whirlwind months, Matt found a perfect professional fit in the marketing department at Heritage Family Credit Union, and we put in an offer on a 1939 Colonial with really good bones.
And here we are, halfway through our second winter in our forever home. Candice is now working at Community College of Vermont, bringing her educational endeavors back full-circle. It was while we were preparing for this post that we discovered that Candice has now lived here longer than she did the first time around.
While it’s hard to believe it’s already been a year since we last played trivia at the Center Street Alley, we’ve stayed connected with virtual game nights, contactless jigsaw puzzle swaps, and reality TV text chains with our Rutland friends. We’ve enjoyed our virtual connections with RYP, from our board and committee meetings to virtual mixes - Candice even hosted a virtual baking event around Thanksgiving which warmed our hearts and bellies alike. We're looking forward to warmer weather, where we can take advantage of our beautiful surroundings, plant some more tomatoes, and hopefully get back to seeing friends in-person soon. Like so many, we miss hugs, but the last year has consistently confirmed that we’ve landed where we belong.