Why Tahoe?

A lot of people have asked me, "Why Tahoe? Why not somewhere closer?" 

Truthfully, I never wanted to get married until I met Anthony. I certainly was not the little girl who dreamed of her big day and had all the details settled by the time she was 6 years old (not that there is anything wrong with that, and frankly it probably would have made this a lot easier). When we started thinking about getting married I thought that we should just elope with our immediate families and that immediately got vetoed by just about everybody. I heartily dislike being the center of attention and I definitely don't like hosting big parties so I knew that I wanted to keep the wedding very small. Frankly if I could have figured out a way to keep it at around 25 people I would have. I figured that if we had our wedding far away then we could legitimately keep it small with just family.

Also, do you have any idea how expensive weddings are these days? I'm generally a relatively frugal person and I couldn't imagine paying more for my wedding than I did for my car. I'm not an extravagant person, I'm very simple and laid back and I knew that I didn't want anything fussy. My ideal was to have a little backyard wedding and for some reason I thought that was out of my reach. We looked at a lot of venues online and even though they were beautiful they were incredibly expensive and offered so many things that I didn't feel we needed or even wanted. It was my parents who suggested having it up in Tahoe at the house. It's something that I never knew I always wanted and suddenly my backyard shindig was a possibility. 

It should also be noted that Anthony came to Tahoe with my family for vacation 6 months into our relationship and proposed to me for the first time there. Obviously we didn't become officially engaged until 3 years later but there will always be a sentimental value to that.

Summer 2010

We hope you find Tahoe as beautiful and magical as we do!

Our Story

Anthony and I met in the Honors hall in the UC Riverside dorms (Fun Fact: My parents also met each other in that exact building, just on the other side). Right from the get go we were eating, living, studying and attending classes with each other. We became friends, and eventually in February 2010 he asked me to be his girlfriend.

The weekend we got together. We look so little!!

We have had our ups and downs just like anyone else, but mostly ups. I am the generally calm and mellow one and Anthony is the exciting and adventurous one and we just kind of complete each other. It's a beautiful partnership.

We have a lot of fun together!

In December 2012 Anthony graduated from UCR (with highest honors!!) with his BA in Anthropology. I followed him soon after in March 2013 with my BA in Ancient History. In June 2013 we got to walk in the same graduation ceremony.

On the first weekend of September 2013, Anthony took me to the beach at night and asked me to marry him. I promptly said, "Well Duh!!"

The first picture after we got engaged

Within two weeks we had both miraculously been offered jobs in my hometown and had found an apartment and things just magically fell into place. 

In May 2014, after completing a premarital class there, Anthony and I went to our church asking for some advice on how to incorporate God into our wedding and we ended up having an impromptu religious wedding ceremony right on the spot! It was really important to us that we included God in our wedding since He will play such a big part in our marriage. So technically we are "church married". Our church currently recognizes us as being married but we still need to make it legal with the state.

We have been incredibly blessed in our life together so far and we are so grateful for everything that we have been able to achieve together. We are incredibly excited for September and to have all of our closest friends and family with us to celebrate this next step in our lives together.

Welcome Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! If you are here that probably means that you have been invited to our wedding and we are so excited about that! Since this is technically a destination wedding we thought that we would make it easier on everyone and just create a blog with all of the information in one place, and also help everyone get to know us a little better. I (Elaina) will be updating this periodically until September 13th so please check in!