Jordan + Charley | Married! The story of our romance with Joshua Tree.. | BLOG

This week marked the 1 year anniversary of our wedding. And while Rock N Roll Bride published our story last year, we've been itching to post something about it here for a while. At the risk of over-sharing, and since you can read the wedding story on R'n'R bride, I thought it might be more interesting to share the story of how we got to our wedding day. So here we go — a photo-diary of the day and the little moments that led us there. Thank you for reading!

How You See Me, June 2nd, 2014, Inverness CA. Double-Exposure, Potra 400

On June 1, our actual anniversary, Charley and I snuck away to Inverness for a night and reflected on what has been an incredible year of change. While our wedding marked a obvious milestone for us, each of the 7 years that we've been together have had their own adventurous theme. This past year has been one of transition and moving toward our long term goals. The year leading up to our wedding was all about the motto work hard — play hard. We put in an absurd amount of work hours and overtime, pushed ourselves through unhealthy amounts of stress, to be able to cut out of town for a few long weekends, drive down to Joshua Tree and Palm Springs to meet with people and plan our wedding.

Often times people choose their wedding location based on where they grew up or some place special to the couple. On the plane back from Hawaii, giddy with being newly engaged, Charley and I made a little dream-list of cool places to get married. Bahamas, New Zealand, Hawaii...you get the picture. In the end, the conversation went like this— Tropical? Too expensive. Santa Cruz—where we met and lived for many years? Good idea, but I've photographed all the good venues, it wont feel special enough. Wine country? Northern California? Coast? You can't get better than Santa Cruz for a coastal location, and wine country is just not our style. A National Park—like the many we road-tripped through when we first started dating? Has to be somewhere close enough to drive...Yosemite is beautiful...or what about Joshua Tree?

Photos from our "engagement" session out in JT Park. Our photographer — a tripod + timer.

Joshua Tree! It would be perfect. I had only been there once, but it felt like home. Plus I had been looking for an excuse to bring Charley there...

from our stay in Hicksville, April 2012

Back in 2011 I took a crazy road-trip with a good friend. I wrote a little about it on my own blog last year (here). The main gist of it — I had no expectations when I left on the trip. I thought—desert? what's even there? — and it turned out to be an incredible experience. Something about the heat, the bizarre landscape, being able to see all of the stars — something about that atmosphere — it wakes you up and brings out your sense of wonder. Every drink of water (or whisky) tastes better. The heat during the day slows you down..but in a good way. There's less to do, but what there is to do—even if it's just staring at a 20 ft boulder formation—you appreciate it more. And the nights are gorgeous. There are more stars than a city girl can wrap her head around.

So when Charley and I finally got about planning our wedding, the most important thing to us was to bring everyone together in the most fun environment possible. We wanted to set the scene for our family and friends to have an experience. And maybe it's presumptuous to think that you can make someone have an experience. But we at least wanted to try.

We started with finding a place for a big group of us to stay. When I got back from JT in 2011, I happened to be watching MTV's Extreme Cribs when they ran the episode featuring Hicksville Trailer Palace—a relatively new Artist Retreat motel located in Joshua Tree. It's off the grid. It can sleep up to 20 or so guests. Each room is actually a trailer with its own theme. But best of all, it's like summer camp for grown-ups—there's a shooting range, ping-pong, lawn games, tipi with a fire-pit inside. We had a small feast with our Hicksville guests the night before the wedding. Here are a few choice photos from HV and dinner that night—

Since HV had limited sleeping arrangements, we found a few perfect alternatives for the rest of the great people coming down for the wedding. Our favorite being The Joshua Tree Inn (made famous by Gram Parsons, our officiant stayed in that room & couldn't have been more stoked!).

We then were on the hunt for a wedding venue. For the most part JT weddings are pretty DIY, and us planning from so far away was going to be a challenge. If you google "Joshua Tree Wedding" mostly what you'll find is a collection of elopements and a few weddings that people have managed to pull together. There are no big-time venues that take care of it all for you (though to be honest that's not what we were looking for anyway). And what I was picturing was something out in the beauty of what you see in the park—boulders, joshua trees, funky cacti—the desert! Somehow I stumbled upon a few really small weddings that were held by The Sacred Sands Bed & Breakfast. The photos of these weddings were exactly what I was picturing in my head. When Charley and I finally made it down there to check it out, we were instantly in love! The guys that run the place were incredibly accommodating and knowledgable of the area. They passed us along to some amazing vendors—our flowers + succulents by Nicole from Cactus Mart; killer food by Tawnja & Amanda at Ricochet Gourmet; Megan & Jessica from the Color Bar did our hair and makeup.

Looking back on it all now, we couldn't have pulled it all off without the outpouring of the love and support from our family, friends, and our small crew of really killer vendors. Of course I could ramble on and on about our day, that weekend, and everything else that happened around our wedding. Instead I'll leave you here with the incredible photos that Rory captured.

Charley and I never felt so loved as we did on that day.

Thank you all.