A Rustic Wedding in Death Valley National Park, United States

Sara (29 and a graduate student) and Brannon (29 and a children’s nonprofit director) started talking through Craigslist and immediately liked each other upon their first meeting, much to their surprise! The year after they met, they moved together to a rural neighborhood in Sonoma County. Sara was preparing to go to Africa to conduct fieldwork for her Ph.D. program, so the couple got engaged right before she left and married a few weeks upon her return! The couple got married in Death Valley National Park for several reasons: It was where they took their first road trip together, and it is located between their two families in Berkeley, California and Tucson, Arizona. “The canyon where we got married felt intimate and lovely, just the right size to fit our guests,” says the bride. The couple’s wedding style was inspired by salvage yard materials such as rusty metals and unvarnished woods and incorporated a color palette of yellows, sages, creams, tans and grays. “We didn’t want any aspect of our decor to compete with the subtle, barren beauty of the desert,” says the bride.