Unconventional Elopement: Visiting Our Marriage Location

I recently opened up to y’all for the first time about how I’m a military wife. I’ve worn that title next to my name for 8 years now, celebrating the anniversary of our marriage on the 7th of July.

But where are my wedding pictures?

Well, the thing is, we never actually had a wedding. When we got engaged, Andy had just moved across the pond to Germany and I was still in Indiana finishing my Graduate degree. That was before I transferred those classes online to make the move permanently but there was one little missing piece for me to actually head to Germany full-time:

Marriage

Even though I knew that marriage was inevitably going to be the next step in our relationship, actually deciding to find some one to wed us from afar was a little intimidating. The military forces us to expedite every life-altering decision (which we’ve come to learn) and our marriage was no exception. Andy approached me one day (well, FaceTime’d me) and said he heard of an online program that offers to marry couples and produce a legitimate marriage license that would be recognized by the military. And so the process began.

Cue the Online Proxy Marriage

A proxy marriage is one where someone stands in to take the vows for the wedded couple. Most proxy marriages are done with only one party being absent but, in our case, neither of us were there. Through a temporary Power of Attorney, we designated two lawyers to stand in front of a judge to say our vows for us and then marry us on their behalf. How unconventional, right? Trust me, coming from a traditional family, this was odd for me too!

On July 7th, 2015, while I was in Indiana bartending at my day job and Andy was in Germany slaving away, we get a congratulatory email confirming that we were indeed just married.

Issuing the Marriage License

It wasn’t long after that email we were issued our legitimate marriage license, giving us the ability to begin the process of getting the military to recognize me as a spouse.

Looking back, I think the worst part of this process was how it made our marriage seem more like a business deal than a solemn swear on our love. I was planning a wedding at one point but life got in the way as it tends to do so, to this day, we’ve yet to exchange vows with each other in person. Another difficult aspect of the way we got married was giving up on the idea of what I always thought my life’s timeline and marriage would look like. I had to learn to start adapting to the cards I had been dealt and begin appreciating what I have instead.

The first email we receive after getting married, along with the congratulatory comments, simply state how they had completed the “ceremony on this beautiful day… with the majestic mountains of Glacier Park in the background.” Oh my, if only I could have been there.

Fast-Forward Four Years

In July of 2019, Andy arrives back in California after a 7 month deployment and in no time we’re planning our next getaway. “How about a road trip out east to some of our nation’s most famous National Parks?” he asked. Count me in.

Read More about my recent life update here!

As we’re driving through Idaho and having our normal randomized road trip conversations, I’m scanning Google Maps and had an ‘AHA!’ moment. We were only a week past our anniversary and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

“ANDY!” I said, “Let’s go to where we got married!” Within 8 hours we’d be where we ‘proxied’ ourselves to each other for life.

Visiting Echo Lake

We arose from the back of our Ford Escape the next morning on a dirt road near the south of Flathead Lake, about an hour outside of our destination. We snagged a couple cups of joes from the gas station and continued along Highway 35 until we reached Big Fork, Montana. Within minutes, we were arriving to Echo Lake, the place where we officially wedded.

It was almost a surreal moment, and still sort of is, like this place, this dreamy, dramatically mountainous land is where we got married. How lucky are we?

We spent some time sitting near the banks of Echo Lake, dreaming about how it may have been had we actually been here on our wedding day. We decided we would have celebrated with a backcountry camping trip as our Honeymoon.

Although it makes me sad to know we missed an opportunity in our marriage to say “I do” in front of our closest family and friends, I still feel so lucky to call this guy mine. I’ve never met a more selfless and caring human being and I couldn’t imagine my life playing out any other way than it did.