Barbed wire.
The handling of the golf cart was rough. With each twist and turn on the narrow path, Amy tightened her grip on our cameras so they wouldn’t fly off into a ditch… or into a sand trap. As we got farther and farther away from the clubhouse and higher and higher up the hill, we felt like we were in the middle of a green mirage. Everything looked the same. Cart paths. Tee boxes. Fairways. And putting greens. In a caravan of carts, we followed right behind the range keeper and our bride and groom. The longer we drove and the less was saw, the more nervous we got. He’d assured us he knew the best place for sunset photos, but we’d almost driven the entire course, everything looked the same, and every minute driving was another minute lost. Finally, we reached the top of the hill, the tee box overlooking the mountains, and he was right, it was beautiful. As we gazed out at the picturesque scene in front of us, though, something caught our eye.
From the tee box, we could see, a few hundred yards in the distance, a barbed wire fence that separated the golf course from the open, abandoned desert. It almost felt like looking out of District 12 into Gale and Katniss’s forest. “Let’s go there,” we suggested. “Are you guys up for it?” we asked. And then they replied with words that made our hearts pitter patter, “We’re up for anything!” We hired you because we trust you. Let’s do it!” What?! We have the coolest couples. From the top of the hill, there wasn’t a direct path to the desert. We couldn’t take carts to get there. So, the four of us started down the hill on foot and trekked the 200 yards to the other side of the hole until we reached the fence that separated manicured golf course from free, rugged, open air, Sonoran desert.
The barbed wire fence was a few feet high, not something you needed to climb over with all fours, but not something you could hop over like a rain puddle either. We walked up and down the fence line for a few minutes, looking for an opening that she could walk through in her dress, but it was sealed shut everywhere we looked. We had two choices: hike back up the hill or Rachel could hike up her dress. “I can do it,” Rachel said, with a confident, yet lighthearted, determination in her eyes. To make it easier, Heath and Jordan pushed down on the fence with their feet (the fence had a little give) to create a small droop in the metal lines. Then Rachel, in her cute white lace Tom’s, turned to the side, hiked up her dress, and, like a pro hurdler, went one leg over, then the next, until she’d made it to the other side. She wasn’t hurt. Her dress wasn’t scathed. And we couldn’t have been more excited to get off the manicured path and onto the beaten one, where we could leave the safety of what “everyone else does” for the adventure of something uniquely them. But, sometimes, in order to get something no one else has, you have to do things other people don’t do, you have to be willing to climb over things that other people won’t. Sometimes, you have to tell that thing in your way that says “you can’t” that you can, and you will.
Heath and Rachel, thanks for welcoming us into your life last year and going with us on a wedding day adventure. When we think about the raw, unfiltered love that you have for each other, we couldn’t have imagined grabbing some portraits anywhere else. This is one of our favorite photos from your wedding day, because it reminds us of just how happy you were from start to finish. After you’d climbed over that fence and you were walking in the distance with Heath, you looked back at us with the biggest grin on your face, as if to say, I did it! WE did it!
And almost exactly a year to the day when you started your adventure together, you became a mom and dad and started a whole different kind, and we’re so happy for you both. Your son doesn’t know yet just how lucky he is to have you for parents. Happy anniversary.
To see Rachel and Heath’s entire wedding blog post, click here.