Bride and Groom elopement in Grand Lake, Colorado — *my husband and I at sunset in Grand Lake, Colorado on our wedding day <3 11.02.2022*

Matthew and I are both from St. Louis, Missouri.

We grew up in the same city. We had mutual connections woven throughout our lives. Our paths came surprisingly close to crossing more than once. Matthew even met my uncle seven years before he met me, completely by happenstance.

And yet, to our knowledge, we never met.

Not until we were two states west of the place we both called home.

We Fell in Love in Colorado

Matthew and I met in Colorado, and from there, we dated long distance.

Colorado became part of the foundation of our relationship, even though St. Louis was home.

Eventually, we learned that we were expecting our first son, Asher. Matthew planned to move back home, but we didn't want to get married simply because we were having a baby. I didn't want our story to feel like a shotgun wedding or like marriage was simply the next thing we were supposed to do.

We wanted to get married because we loved each other.

And we wanted to do it somewhere that meant something to us.

So we went back to Colorado.

Eloping in Grand Lake, Colorado

On November 2, 2022, Matthew and I eloped in Grand Lake.

There was no massive wedding production. No elaborate timeline. No hundreds of guests waiting for us.

Just us, the mountains and the beginning of our marriage.

We honeymooned surrounded by the snowcapped Rocky Mountains and stayed in a little cabin together.

And because I am a photographer, there was one particularly ridiculous detail to our elopement:

We took our own wedding pictures.

Armed with a tripod, a drone and a whole lot of hopes and dreams, we photographed ourselves as newlyweds in the Colorado mountains.

Are they the photographs I would have created if I had been standing behind the camera?

Absolutely not.

Do I love them anyway?

More than I can explain.

Because they're ours.

The Photographs Don't Have to Be Perfect to Become Priceless

I think being on the other side of the camera taught me something important about the photographs I create for other people.

As a photographer, I can see everything I would have done differently with our wedding portraits.

But as a wife?

I don't really care.

I see the mountains where we started our marriage. I see the man I fell in love with. I see us before so much of our life together had happened.

I see the two of us standing at the very beginning of our family.

Those photographs became more valuable because of what they hold, not because they're technically perfect.

And maybe that's part of why I care so deeply about preserving memories for the people who trust me with theirs.

Someday, a photograph stops being about the perfect light, the perfect pose or whether everything looked exactly the way you imagined it would.

It becomes evidence of the life you lived.

From Colorado Back to St. Louis

After our elopement and honeymoon, we eventually came home.

Matthew moved back to St. Louis, and we began building our life here together with Asher.

Our family has grown since those photographs were taken. Life looks different now than it did when we stood in those mountains as newlyweds.

But I still love the strange symmetry of our story.

Two people from St. Louis, whose lives had quietly overlapped without them knowing it, had to travel hundreds of miles from home to finally find each other.

And when it came time to get married, we went back to the place where it all began.

I fell in love in Colorado.

I stay in love in St. Louis.

And when I look at the life that has grown from those two people standing together in the mountains, there's a verse that says it better than I ever could: