Our #Awwlopement!!!!

AAAAAHHHH!! It’s finally time to fully reveal our favorites from our elopement photos! If you missed our feature on Green Wedding Shoes last week, you can go read it over here, but we’ll be sharing lots more photos below AND if you make it to the end, we have a snippet from our first dance video at the end!

I already talked about all of this in a previous post here, but I’ll start this post off with it as well! I’ve definitely never been the type of person to dream about ever having a big wedding, frankly, I never thought about marriage at all! And while my friends meticulously planned out their future weddings when I was younger, I had no idea what I would do if I ever got married. After meeting Kyle and getting engaged, we talked a lot about what our plans would be like. We both love traveling, so would we do a destination wedding? Would we have a church wedding? Who would we invite? When we talked about eloping, it always seemed more exciting to us than any other option, but eloping means something different to every couple, so we had to figure out what would make the most sense for us!

In the technical sense, “to elope” means “to run away,” but modern times have linked it directly to weddings and marriage. People use “elope” to describe a few different scenarios nowadays: getting married without telling anyone at all, conducting the ceremony with just the two of you after having informed others about your plans, or having a very small affair with a few close witnesses. All of these can be done at a courthouse, among other venue options! Unless you’re doing the absolute bare minimum for your elopement, there will still be a few elements to plan for: travel, lodging, venue, and attire will have to be accounted for. If you have elected to conduct the most basic ceremony, you will still need to be prepared with legal documents, such as birth certificates and a marriage license plus other documentation depending on your state’s laws!

We settled on Palm Springs as our final destination after we got our NYC marriage license, rented a gorgeous house in PS for a few days, hired an incredible baker to make a small shag cake, found a florist, a photographer, and headed out to Palm Springs for the main event! I hope you’re ready for some scrolling because there were SO many good photos I couldn’t narrow them down! A HUGE thank you to the team we had for making this the most perfect, special day for us. It was literally everything I could have envisioned and more!

Photography: Mary Costa Photography // Florals: Wild Muse Floral // Hairpiece: Vintage Floral Headscarf from The Fine Art of Design in Palm Springs // Hair Stylist: Sandra Robles // Cake: Alana Jones-Mann // Car Rental: The Antique Pink Cadillac // Home Rental: Acme House Co

While the florals for the car were being put together, we took photos around the house we were staying in and the surrounding neighborhood. Our rental from Acme House Co had the most incredible wallpaper (below), and we had to take advantage of it!

A few months before we were set to leave, we had all of the components of our outfits figured out except for Kyle’s shirt. We couldn’t find anything we liked anywhere, so I decided to recreate my headscarf print in an illustration and get it made into a shirt. It was definitely a tedious project, but it was SO worth it and brought our looks together! As for my dress, I bought it on Etsy shortly after we got engaged. It was a vintage 50’s prom dress, which was always my dream dress in high school, and when it arrived it fit like a glove! I had a couple of other dress options too (including a 60’s coral dress), but once I found my headscarf, I knew this hot pink beauty was the one!

From the moment I saw Alana‘s incredible shag cakes, I knew I wanted one for our future wedding. I sent her a photo of the vintage headscarf I had found in Palm Springs and she recreated the pattern in cake form. When we got to LA, we picked the cake up from Alana’s place, and let me tell you, transporting that cake from LA to Palm Springs was one of the most stressful drives of my life! Mostly because it was close to 90 degrees in Palm Springs and I was picturing opening up the box to a melted cake when we arrived. I was so pleased that it made it in perfect condition, and it was SOOOO good!!! At the end of the day, we all sat down and ate a slice. It was the best end to an incredible day!

Mary, our amazing photographer, found this spot on the road by the Palm Springs visitor center that had the most picturesque background where we headed next. Kyle likes to say the above photo is our band photo if we ever have one. We brought our favorite sunglasses with us from home and used this perfect golden hour as an opportunity to get them out!

A vintage pink Cadillac (my dream car) in the desert, covered in flowers was a picture I always envisioned in my head when I thought about how we’d get married. It was the perfect blend of both of our interests and styles; Kyle loves nature, we both love old cars and pink, and obviously the florals were my idea! It’s funny when you elope and literally only 5 people are there, because it felt like not a single other person was there when we were dancing and looking at one another in front of this car. It was truly a magical moment and one I will never forget.

And can we talk about these florals for a minute?! HOLY COW Morgan killed it! We picked out a color palette, and myself, knowing nothing about flowers, put my full trust in her to create this vision we both had in mind. My jaw dropped when I saw the finished product; it was stunning and like something straight out of a painting!

We went back towards the house to park in front of this all pink house for a cake cutting moment. Even though we opted out of doing a traditional ceremony, we knew that we still wanted to have a wedding cake and have photos of us cutting the cake. You all know how big of a fan of sweets I am, so cake was an essential part of this for me!

There you have it! I’ve never shoved cake in anyone’s face before but it was probably one of the most fun things we did the whole day. Plus, that cake was reallllyyyy good, so I was totally okay being forced to eat it haha! We wanted this day to really represent us and I’m so happy this is how it all came together. One day when we show these to our kids, they’re either going to think we’re pretty cool or extremely weird and that’s exactly the way I wanted it to be! Again, thank you to our team and I also want to thank all of YOU for all of your support over the years. You’ve literally been there to watch us get older and watch our relationship grow, and now here we are with our next step in life. We are so grateful for you!!!

I can’t wait to see where our next adventures take us. I’m so proud of you everyday, Kyle, and I’m so happy that I found someone who understands me and is there for me as much as you. Love you, butt!

Photography: Mary Costa Photography // Florals: Wild Muse Floral // Hairpiece: Vintage Floral Headscarf from The Fine Art of Design in Palm Springs // Hair Stylist: Sandra Robles // Cake: Alana Jones-Mann // Car Rental: The Antique Pink Cadillac // Home Rental: Acme House Co

Well, if you made it to the end you get to see this clip from our first dance to Jesus and the Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey.” We waited until everyone left and danced to one of our favorite songs. If you follow along on Instagram, you might have noticed we got the lyrics made into a neon sign that now lives in our bedroom. This was such a special moment for me even though I literally can’t dance at all. Ha!