I met and married my husband within a year and a half. Technically, from the time we officially started dating it was about 11 months. In fact, we got married on our 11th month anniversary.
When you know, you know.
I wrote a blog about our meeting, dating, and engagement history already...and I'm excited to write this post about our elopement!
We got engaged on 8/17/21 and from there I started planning our marriage event.
If you know me, then you know that I don't like to do things quite the way "normal" people do things. Therefore, I planned our wedding not as a wedding, but as an elopement. (I will preface that all of these plans were not only my decisions. Everything I brought up or asked for, Joseph was cool with and I worked with him on things he definitely wanted vs didn't want. It was all mutual decisions. Our event, not just mine.)
Firstly, I wanted an elopement over a typical wedding for several reasons. I have had a side business filming and editing over 65 weddings in the last 10 years. Needless to say, I'm a bit burnt out on traditional weddings. They're simply not my personal style or preferance. I also didn't want either side of our families weighing in too much about their wants for our day. Don't get me wrong, I don't think our families are like that. But in my experience, weddings don't make everyone perfectly, exactly happy all across the board. So, I just went with having our day cater to us specifically without any outside worries.
There were a couple of hoops we did had to jump through, though. Since we were having a true elopement, there wouldn't be the necessary people to sign our marriage license. We had to make another day(we decided on a dinner a week after we eloped) for our chosen people to do just that. Also, Joseph wanted a party to celebrate with family and friends. We decided to have a reception later on to do accomplish that. With all of this, it ended up turning into three events. It still was less stressful over all and we got to do the things we wanted to do in our way and timing.
Alright.
First we had to get married. In our eyes, the union means the most if you commit yourselves to each other before God. We eloped because we wanted it to be just that. Us and God. We did have a photographer there to take photos for us, so in the end that's all that came. No other family, no officiant. Just who mattered to our union. Us and God (and a phtoographer because it was a bomb looking event and we want to look back and remember).
We planned it for the coolest date ever. 2/22/22. Exactly 11 months since I said I would be his girlfriend. We had some months to write special vows to eachother, get our outfits and accessories, and make sure Macy (my photographer sister at Macy Spencer Photography) was free.
I got my dress through a Ukrainian etsy shop called Stylish Bride Accs. I pieced together a bodysuit and skirt setup that I liked. I sent them my exact measurements and they got to creating it to those. No, I didn't want a white dress. Again, not my style. They're beautiful on brides, but I just wanted to go my own unique way. We ordered Joe's green tweed suit through an Indian store called Studio Suits. I gave them Joe's exact measurments and they made it from scratch just for him. I did mess up on the vest order and didn't realize that when I placed it that the silky part of it wasn't black like we wanted...instead it's the ugliest, shiniest, red paisly design lol. Why!? My fault for not catching that one though. We didn't have time to fix that before the day came along. But I would highly recommend both of these shops.
We got Joe's ring, my jewelry, garter, veils, and shoes(which I painted ferns on) off ofdifferent Etsy shops as well. I made my bouquet myself, trying to make it semi-spiky, I painted the plants I got and tried to get different dark green tones and blacks in it, with copper accents of course. As for my ring, Joe had me design it myself, and after months of the jewelry store doing us dirty, we finally got it the way we wanted. My Mother-in-law so kindly gave Joe her old wedding ring for me to use the stones out of to incorporate into my ring. I used the bagettes out of it and plan on using the rest for something else. In the pictures we have of my ring, however, it wasn't complete. The store let us take it for our wedding, but after the fact is when we got my final ring all set and done. It looks alot like the one pictured, but has a row of small diamonds set into the band opposite side of the gem cluster.
Just below is a bunch of photos of our final fits!
I wanted a winter day. I wanted it to be snowy all over and not partially melted. Yuck. What I didn't know is that it would be the coldest day of the year. One of our trucks showed -22°F on the 22nd. But we did get our freshly blanketed ground with beautiful snow and periods of light snow. We got our home Beartooth mountains for our backdrop.
2/22/22 2 o'clock Tuesday -22°F Just the 2 of us
I went to my parent's house to get ready the morning of the 22nd. Mom and Macy helped me. Joe stayed behind at the house we moved into that week and got ready there. We left seperately at around 1pm. We met up at 2ish at Alpine and did our first look by the frozen lake. It was so bitterly cold. Like, bruh. So cold. Throughout each thing we did, we had to keep going to our trucks to warm up in between. Our fingers and the backs of my arms were bright red from lack of blood flow and freezing to death. Not fun to edit in photos later on, I'm sure! Of course since Macy is one person, we did have her do mostly photos, but she managed to get a few film clips for me to edit later on. Even though the cameras were freezing and some of the footage actually turned out choppy from the sheer cold, I managed to make a couple cute videos out of the footy! We wanted a few drone clips, but no way was that happening in that frigid cold.
We did a few other traditions before we headed home.
We wrote our own vows. Which are beautiful by the way, and Joseph did a wonderful job writing his! Really proud of him. I look forward to the future upholding those promises.
We gave eachother rings, and then we did a handfasting where we read aloud a meaningful celtic blessing to eachother.
We took a shot with a shot ski that I painted. Literally could not skip this awesome tradition! So fitting for us.
We just had to trudge into some deep snow to make some cool smoke bomb photos.
We did our first dance as our last thing before leaving. We didn't have a song playing, so we sorta just sang part of our song 'Another You' by Danny Worsnop while we danced instead.
Just over a week later on 3/3/22, we got dressed up again for family photos and marriage license signing. It was much, much warmer and bearable. I bet it was right around 25-30°F. Joe and I took some more photos with Macy while waiting for family to arrive to the location we picked out. We just went to a pretty tree setting right outside of Red Lodge MT to Wild Bill Lake. They arrived around 3:30pm and we did a couple more smoke bombs and family photos. I was super happy to get these portraits for future walls to remember this by. Unfortunately, my older twin brother, Sterling, couldn't come since he was mining a hitch in Alaska during that week. And my future sister-in-law, Tristan, couldn't make it either. My plan was to get photos with them later at our reception party date in the summer.
After photos, we had booked dinner at the most delicious steak place...Edgar Bar. This place is seriously the bomb. Don't argue with me.
As soon as everyone left for Edgar, Joseph and I did a huge part of our wedding plan before we left to join them for dinner. We wanted to do it on the 22nd, but we may have got frost bite if we had. So we decided to do it right here and now. Ring Finger Tattoos. I had wanted to do this on my spouse and him on me for several years now. Just one of those big risk/crazy idea/unique/one-of-a-kind things. I had never heard of this exactly, and I wanted to do it just beacause it was so cool to me. What better way to show commitement than this? lol No, not having someone tattoo us. But us tattooing eachother. That much more special. No, neither of us has ever tattooed anyone else. But we bought a decent machine, and my sleeve tattoo artist gave me good ink to use in support of my idea. We practiced on fake skin. We decided to let the other pick the design that they wanted to give to the other. Joe liked the Roman Numerals for 2/22/22, so I decided to do that on him. I knew I'd be happy with whatever Joe gave me, even if it was a crappy wobbly line lol. As long as it was from him. A few nights before getting married, I heard him practicing tattooing the fake skin in the living room. I went in and there he was, practicing the design he decided to give me. A fern. I adore ferns. I loved it and am super happy he decided on something like that! We began doing our "Tailgate Tattoos" as best we could. It took about 10-15 minutes. We both were ready for the hurt, but we both thought in the end that it wasn't as bad as we had expected. We love these tattoos and our story behind their origins <3
After, we left and met up a few minutes late to our reservation at Edgar. Here we signed our marriage license. In Montana, no one needs to be witness or officiate the actual 'ceremony'. The state requires that whoever the couple picks to sign the license should be someone that they trust. So, we picked Joe's father, Rod, sign the officiant's spot. We had my mother and Joe's sister, Ang, sign the witness' spots. My parents gave us a family Bible, which I already feel super sentimental about. I had my dad sign that one's officiant's spot on the wedding page in the beginning of the book. We all ate delicious steak and sides before parting most ways. Joe and I went out to bar hop a bit on the way home. My dad, Macy, and my sister-in-law Lacy joined us. We stopped at the 212 in Joliet, the Heavy Horse in Roberts to play Ring the Bull, the Lost Village to play Pool in Roberts, and the Snow Creek in Red Lodge (the snow is my favorite bar). My dad and I danced in the Snow Creek to a JukeBox song. I was getting pretty toasted, so I can't remember off the top of my head which song it was lol. But I remember the dancing and hanging out and saying goodbye when we'd shut the bars down.
Seriously a magnificent day!
The Reception Party was the third part to our crazy love fiasco! Joe is the one who wanted a party, so we did our best to make it happen. I think we did really well with organizing it and making it worth it to join us.
We planned it for 6/11/22 and managed to get that date booked at Castaway Campgrounds in Roberts MT. We got the entire campground for the entire weekend. Plenty of room for people to stay in cabins or at the RV/Camp spots, all on us. We planned a big party and made really cool invites for over 120 invitees, not including their +1s and/or kids. Most said nothing, 80 RSVP'd and 40 showed. Even though the lameos who didn't say anything in respose to an invite, or who didn't show after saying they would was a major bummer to us, we were super blessed and grateful to those who did wish us well and who did come. We wanted everyone to have a great time!
It rained all day and night, and got real windy a few times on the Saturday. Maaaannn, if rain is lucky for a wedding day, then Joseph and I will have an awesome marriage! On our engagment day, we rode around in cold-ass rain on our motorcycles for 10 hours that day. On our elopement day was effing freezing ass cold with light snow (which is a form of frozen rain for this purpose). And on our reception day, it was so wet that it literally caused a flood. Literally. The infamous flood that wreaked havoc and flooded out a ton of Carbon, Stillwater, and Park counties, technially started at our reception because of our love. The rain and mountain snow melt-off caused the river level to rise all day Then we went to sleep at the campground in our cabin by the river, and the next morning when we woke up to clean up the campground...the area was still so rainy and flooding. Later that night, the town we live in had started to really flood out. Yep, our love may have caused all of that. No one has proof otherwise. Anyways. We worked hard to decorate the eating tables, welcome table, photo booth, music and playlists, and bar. The bar was on us, and it had a ton of beer, wine, seltzer, and mixed drink opions. And the bartender we got (Ashley) was so awesome. Joe, one of my family members, spent all day with my dad roasting a couple of pigs for us on site. Man, they were hella delicious after smelling them roasting all day long! My husband hired this incredible, southern lady named Robbie, who catered all the sides and cobblers. Those were to die for as well, and she worked her ass off to make everything so tasty for everyone. Food comas for everyone! People showed up and most stayed through our dances. Sadly, not many others seemed to be in a dancing mood to take it to the dance floor for more than a song. Oh well. I do think several people had a good time, which I'm grateful for, and I am happy I got to see them there. I do wish I had more time to visit with each of them and wasn't pulled away so often for weather of food issues. It still means to world to us that they came for us and I'll always know that! Joe and I stayed up late around a campfire with about 7 others who stayed up really late with us, and we had the best time! We were able to give cabins out for them, and were super tired and happy to have a dry place to stay after such a long day!
So there is my blog post about our three part elopement/license signing/reception party! I loved the way everything turned out in the end, and who I ended up with for the rest of my life. I get my sweet husband, Joseph. He takes amazing care of me and loves me more than I could ever deserve! Here is to forever with an amazing human!
**Below are some links to our elopement videos and other elopement tiktoks if you're so inclined to motion pictures.