After their long-planned beach wedding dreams were crushed by COVID, this firefighter family quickly created a safe affair (away from the 2020 Colorado wildfires) with their loved ones in the thick mountain aspens. The duo rented out their favorite secret campground in a remote location in Cimarron, Colorado. The weekend was spent floating on the reservoir and laughing during a Wedding Olympics Relay Race hosted by the groom. Those invited came together in heroic form to create dreamy details including a glamping honeymoon tent with “room service”, wedding logo, custom cake, day of hair and makeup, florals, custom wedding jewelry, and a market light overhang in the forest reception brilliantly engineered by the groom. The couple even hired an amazing BBQ food truck to drive out to their campground! A fellow firefighter and his daughter sang the night away for a magical finish.
How did you meet?
Bill & Emily “met” on Match.com. Emily recognized him right away as the 4th grade “Billy” she had gone to school with, but Billy couldn’t remember exactly why she looked so familiar. After a few days of talking on Match.com, Billy asked Emily if she wanted to meet up to go on a hike. They decided to meet at the trail-head at 9am for a quick hike. Emily had told her best friend, Olivia, and her mom, Laurie, where she would be “just in case he ended up being a murderer”. Emily decided she could wait to eat breakfast that morning and Billy was dressed in semi—nice clothing (it was his mom’s birthday) and Billy forgot to bring water. Well, a quick hike turned into a 6-hour hike! Billy took a path he thought looped back around to the parking lot and, of course, couldn’t admit to Emily on their first date that he had taken a wrong turn…so they just kept hiking! They didn’t stop talking the entire time though, so it turned out to be a good thing! After not hearing from Emily for a few hours, Olivia and Laurie started texting each other, getting extremely worried. They both could track Emily’s cell phone and because she didn’t have any service out on the hike, it appeared she hadn’t moved from the same spot in the middle of a field for a good three hours. At the end of the hike, Billy gave Emily a kiss on the cheek and they went their separate ways. Emily immediately texted Olivia and Laurie to tell them the funny story of their hike and that it had done well. They were so relieved after waiting forever for her to get home. It took quite a while for Billy to live that one down.
What is your proposal story?
Emily and Billy had a road trip to California planned to pick up their new puppy, Macie, over Emily’s birthday weekend. Billy planned the trip out and decided that on Thursday, March 7th (the day before Emily’s birthday) they would go on a hike up Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park. If you don’t know what Angel’s landing looks like—look it up. It is one of the most dangerous and difficult hikes in the U.S. Once they arrived to the top, Billy pulled out the ring and asked her in front of the beautiful view.
Tell us a little a bit about your wedding (your vision, color, style, and location choices).
Bill and I had initially planned a Mexico wedding. We had everything planned and purchased for a date in May of 2020. However, come mid-April, we began to realize that the destination wedding we had planned was not going to happen because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We let our family and friends know that we had to temporarily postpone our wedding. For the next few months, we hoped that we would be able to reschedule our Mexico wedding, but it became more and more clear that it would be a while before it was going to be safe to do so. Over the 4th of July we went camping with my (Emily’s) family to our favorite southern Colorado camping spot. On day two of our camping trip, we decided to take a walk to the overlook. It was there that Billy turned around and asked me if I wanted to get married *here-in-this-spot* instead. I thought it was a wonderful idea and the rest of the weekend was overcome by planning! The outfit selections did not change from what we had planned in Mexico. The rest of it just fell into place! We wanted it to be casual and easy. At this point, we just wanted to be married!
Tell us about your attire choices.
Our Mexico colors ended up fitting right into the new location landscape. The blue of the bridesmaids dresses and groom’s pants reflected the beautiful blue water of the reservoir.
What was the most important to the two of you while planning? Was there anything that you chose to splurge on or skip?
It was very important for things to be easy and not stressful. As much as we tried to stick to that, planning still had its moments! We chose to splurge on the café lights. We knew we would have to purchase a lot of strings of LED lights to get the effect we were going for, but we knew it would be worth it! We decided to skip splurging for a cake, but then one of my bridesmaids offered to make it for us!
What were your favorite parts of the day?
One of our favorite parts of the day was using walkie-talkies to communicate the morning of. We were in a place where we didn’t have cellphone service and it was the only way to communicate between the girls site and the guys site without walking 5 minutes to the other location. Our other favorite part was our first look and private vows.