Wedding Date on Nov 3, 2016

From The Bride: Daniel and I have known each other since the 7th grade, we went to Junior High and High School together in Mesa, Arizona. We were always friends and had tons of mutual friends, but it wasn’t until WAY later in our lives that we started dating. We re-connected through social media, just casually messaging each other, I was living out of state at the time going to school so this went on for years. Once I moved back to Arizona in 2008, we would still just casually and sporadically talk through social media, sometimes discussing going out for drinks but never really making solid plans until we finally went on a date in July of 2011 and have been inseparable ever since. We fell in love fast and loved just being with each other. We got engaged in February of 2015, just the 2 of us in the mountains which is our favorite place to be. As far as wedding planning…We had originally planned to get married in the spring of 2016, but my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly after we got engaged. We put all wedding planning on hold, not sure what the future would hold for my mom and torn between planning a wedding or just eloping so that we could ensure my mom would be there. My mom kept telling me the whole time she was sick to just go look at Saguaro Lake Ranch because it was perfect for us and she wanted us to get married there. We went and toured and it was perfect, but they didn’t have any spring dates available so we kind of just put planning on the back burner again. My mom ended up passing away in early 2016 and a when we were ready to plan again, we both knew the only place we wanted to get married was Saguaro Lake Ranch as it was the only place that my mom was able to tour with us. We planned our wedding in about 7 months, which was pretty fast. My best advice for other brides is to do whatever you want and not worry about the rules and traditions. We are both in our 30’s and not super traditional, so we chose to do things our way. No bouquet tossing, garter throwing, etc. We kept it fancyish, but not formal and we wanted our guests to just have a fun and relaxed night!