In October of 2020 it was becoming clear that our wedding plans of bringing our 120 guests together were not likely to happen any time soon. We'd started to plan for our immediate families and found that the logistics of a "mini-wedding" had nearly the same complexity as the whole shebang.

By St. Patrick's Day, we'd gone through a few rounds of planning for our immediate families with canceled dates and had moved our sights to our next goal: buying our first home. On our way to visit model homes, we saw a pair of hot air balloons going up for a sunset cruise and started to joke that it would be the perfect socially distant wedding, just the two of us. After some more serious consideration and a few phone calls, we'd picked a date on the one year anniversary of our wedding that wasn't, 5.21.21.

The arrangements were made to have our original photographer join us in the basket while being married by our pilot. We imagined the comical pauses in the ceremony between blasts of heat and fire to keep us suspended in the sky followed by vows as we hovered in flight. We kept the planned ceremony short, 5 mins tops, and started with "as we take flight" in tribute to the adventure.

But 48 hours before our flight we spoke with the hot air balloon company who, expecting some challenging weather, asked if we were okay to "launch from a higher elevation and go up above the clouds," which we agreed to after a few questions about the safety of the voyage.

The evening before our sunrise flight, we got a phone call just before heading to our vineyard hotel in Temecula with separate hotel rooms-- the balloon company shared we were their last call of the night-- they'd called every other company and all of their pilots and no one was flying the next day. We were beside ourselves, suddenly with a hotel room and nowhere to be.

Fortunately our good friend and original officiant Kyle was in town to take care of our dog and had brought a suit "just in case" we needed it. That, combined with the good luck of a wedding license with an empty wedding location gave us lots of options.

We woke up that morning in separate beds wondering what the day had in store for us. With only 1 thing for certain (that we were getting married), we went about ordering room service and starting to get ready. We'd decided to have "first look" photos taken to simplify the logistics of what was sure to be a "fly by the seat of our pants" kind of day. We had a fun and lighthearted photo shoot full of laughs with Kyle by our side. One thing was still left to figure out- where we were going to get married!

After a lot of morning googling about beaches and parks that required permits, Brian wished we'd just have a place of our own we could get married, and that's when genius struck- we should get married in our new home! The sales office for the builder was delighted by our impromptu request and let us know the doorbell was being installed but the crew would be done early for the day. So we packed all we'd taken with us to Temecula to venture back to the new home we were closing on in June for a simple ceremony.

Before we arrived to the house, we realized we needed to make a pit stop. Hungry after our morning photo shoot, we made a drive-thru pass to Jack in the Box for burgers and curly fries to solidify just how untraditional the day would be.

As we'd planned for our airborne adventure, we kept the ceremony short and simple (and started with "as we take flight...to the second floor of their new house"). We exchanged our written vows and made each other cry in the northeast corner of what would become our master bedroom.

After the ceremony, we were right back on schedule to celebrate a special weekend stay at the Lodge at Torrey Pines, where we'd arranged to take some more photos and have dinner with a small wedding cake and spend the weekend in the jacuzzi and playing golf. However, the afternoon had a few more twists for us. We arrived in full wedding gear ready for photos and went right to our room overlooking the main outdoor function space to take photos. After capturing the room and getting settled in we went down to the beautiful lobby and stairs to continue the photo shoot with our photographer. And while we were excited to see that there was a couple getting married on the front lawn, apparently they were not as accommodating of our presence as a staff member ran up to us mid-photo shoot yelling "one bride!" and informing us we needed to leave the area of the other wedding in our attire. After clarifying that we'd spoken to most of the staff about our plans to take photos that day, the team was accommodating to bring us to an equally beautiful area of the hotel to complete our photos for the day with an apology in the form of champagne to celebrate. Hopefully we didn't ruffle too many feathers of the other wedding, but we certainly walked away with a few laughs and a story to share!

We went to dinner in our wedding garb and were celebrated by the tables around us as we retold the story of the day.

We're sorry we couldn't have you there with us, but hopefully reading this makes you feel a part of the day we pulled together!