Palm Springs Backyard Elopement

Elopement photos at Palm Spring’s Moorten Botanical Gardens

What did you love about having a backyard elopement and your portraits at Moorten Botanical Gardens?

We loved how chill it was -- no pomp and circumstance, just a drag queen officiant in an octopus body --and members of our chosen family who got to actually attend in person. The elopement allowed us to spend quality time with each other and our friends, which was VERY important to us. We had a Friendsgiving potluck dinner afterward and it was perfect.

Tell me how you two met!

We met playing Ultimate Frisbee in a tutu and a skirt (we'll let you guess who wore which) in Portland, OR in... 2011? Then Scott quickly moved down to Palm Springs, CA to pursue his golf career. As such, we became summertime Frisbee friends when he would come up to Portland to escape the desert heat. Fast forward a few years and we had become friends with benefits between our other relationships and then, in 2016, after we both had experienced especially tough breakups and he had moved back to Portland, we were supporting each other through said breakups and essentially said, "Wait a second... This is so nice! We know, support, and love each other already -- why don't we go for it?" So we did. And here we are now, legally family in Palm Springs, CA with our two monstrously adorable chihuahuas.

What makes your relationship unique? What do you love about each other?

There are many things that make our relationship unique, starting with our many-year friendship and then supporting each other through tough breakups being the catalyst for starting our own relationship. Another unique point for us is that this is the first non-monogamous relationship for us both and we came into this relationship knowing that we both wanted to try it (spoiler: we love it, it's great here). One of the MANY things we love about each other is how we communicate. We both listen, and we both know that coming to the table with a hard topic will be met with understanding, support, love, and deeper conversations. This makes trusting each other extremely easy and makes us feel like we truly can evolve over our lives and still stay just as committed to our relationship -- we love that we're both ever-evolving humans on our own paths!

What are you both looking forward to celebrating most on your wedding day?

Truly becoming legally family and sharing that moment with our bestest buds. We've known we were family for a looooong time, and now the government knows too!