THE PROPOSAL:

The proposal took place on November 19, 2018 in the mountains of Sedona, AZ with just us on top of a hill that took a lot of effort to climb. The views were breathtaking which is why we chose our wedding ceremony to be at Red Rock Canyon. It brought us back to how special our engagement was and the boardwalk allowed us to recreate how we felt that day. 

THE VISION:

Growing up I always dreamed of having a big wedding outdoors and as my relationship with Aaron, and with myself, grew, I wanted a big wedding less and a smaller wedding more. Minnesota is our home, but we knew we wanted a ceremony outside of MN since a lot of our family is across the United States. A “destination” wedding became more and more appealing so once we narrowed down that an elopement was perfect for us, we began the search for a location. Based on the proposal, we immediately knew outdoors surrounded by mountains was what we wanted. Immloved ediate family and our closest friends by our side with the sun shining down on all of us. Our vision of recreating moments from our proposal came to life with the boardwalk ceremony.

THE PLANNING PROCESS:

This was the best part. I can become stressed very easily and throughout our wedding planning process (which became nearly impossible to finish during COVID) everything I thought I wanted just didn’t make me happy anymore. I always thought that some part of me would light up with every decision I made and everything I had to do only made me more anxious. That’s when we started searching for simpler options and potentially elopement. We narrowed our location to Las Vegas and by some miracle, I found Elopement Las Vegas and I am SO HAPPY I did. They took all of the “planning” out of wedding planning and made it so simple for me to make decisions by essentially narrowing down every decision I had to make. All I really needed to do was choose outfits and get my family to Vegas at the right time. It was glorious – and truthfully, there was nothing about the process that I was stressed out about. I also have to mention Martha as part of the planning process because she was a literal game changer as our day of Coordinator. Nothing phased her and she never skipped a beat. So much praise for how smoothly she made our wedding day go!

MEMORABLE MOMENTS

Aaron’s favorite moment was watching me walk down the boardwalk to him with my brother. He has special needs and I didn’t tell him he was walking me down the aisle until the day of. Everyone at the ceremony watched with delight at how proud he was walking with me and he couldn’t stop talking about it. My favorite moment was standing up front with Aaron, looking at each other and reciting our vows. It felt like there was no one else there but us and it made me feel extremely happy. I had several people tell me about their wedding experiences with big weddings and they all regretted not having much time to actually spend with their husbands because of all the people they had to cater to. That day, I had all the time to love my husband and being able to have our family and friends there was a bonus 🙂

We also LOVED photos with Kassie! We had never had professional photography done and it was such a joy walking around with her. She made us feel extremely comfortable for people who don’t like to take pictures!

 ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES

 People are going to give you their opinions and advice regardless of if you ask them. You’re also going to make some people upset with the decisions you made for your day. You don’t have to listen to ANY of it. It is YOUR day and the only feelings you should be concerned with are your partner and yourself. Put things into perspective and realize that this is ONE day out of your lifetime and it should be exactly how you want it to be. By eloping, we were able to take it all in and live in the moment. On that day, at that time, nothing else mattered but us. 

VENDORS
Officiant : Judy Irving
Photographer : Feel and Focus Photography
Floral: Amy Wong Events
Coordinator & Permit: Desert Elopement Las Vegas