Erica and Lane’s Summer Wedding at Crested Butte in Colorado

We both joined an online dating site the summer of 2020. At the time, we were only 20 minutes away from each other. I had just started my first nursing job in Fargo and he was working in Casselton with a construction company. We talked on the phone daily for about three weeks before we met in person. It only took Lane a week before he asked to make the relationship official. On our second date, we took my dog, Lucy out for a walk and she completely fell in love with Lane. She loves bird hunting and driving around with her dad. Lane’s job site eventually moved by fall of 2020 and we had to start long distance. Every other weekend we would drive to each other which is about a 3 hour drive one way.

In April/May 2021 we went to Yellowstone National park as our first vacation together. Lane had stashed my engagement ring underneath his truck seat for the whole trip but didn’t propose for another 2 weeks.

On our 10 month anniversary we headed out for a ride in his truck. He told me we were getting gas for the boat to go fishing the next morning. When Lane passed the gas station, I knew he was planning something. He pulled into Moose Lake and told me to get out of the truck. I walked out to the edge of the lake and noticed Lane was down on one knee. I was so excited that I completely forgot to answer and he had to ask me twice.

We are both from Minnesota/North Dakota area but fell in love with mountains and waterfalls (hard to come by where we live). We started looking up destination weddings and found beautiful mountains and waterfalls around Crested Butte and knew we had to go there for our wedding. The majority of the wedding decorations are handmade, DIY projects. We made all the flower decorations including garlands, boutonnieres and bouquets. Most of the other decorations came from small shops off of Etsy. Crazy to think we planned a whole wedding in CO from our small couch in ND without ever seeing the venue or tasting the food. We trusted the vendors and took a leap of faith.