Rodion & Balushka booked me for their elopement pretty last minute – just about a week before. That tends to happen fairly often for elopements. For weddings I usually have about a year to get to know my clients, to hear their stories and figure out their personalities. I love that part of the process of photographing weddings. For elopements sometimes I email back and forth with the client a couple of times and then we show up on the day of the elopement and its our first real conversation. This was the case with Rodion and Balushka, so it wasn’t until after the ceremony that I learned more in-depth details about their crazy/amazing love story. These two first talked about marriage almost 15 years ago but it wasn’t meant to be at that time. They went their separate ways, Rodion stayed in Russia and Balushka moved to Arizona but they kept in touch off and on. Fast forward to last year (more than a decade later). Balushka was looking for an adventure and knew that Rodion always takes awesome vacations, and she ended up joining him on a trip to Iceland where they both fell in love. Rodion moved to Arizona to be with her, and they decided just a few weeks ago to elope in Alaska. Whew! Amazing right? So much life happened in 15 years but Rodion was still in love with Balushka, and I love how their journey brought them back together at just the right time.
March came in like a lion this year…and their Alaska Spring Elopement was definitely more of an Alaska Winter Elopment. We woke up on the morning of their ceremony to gusting winds and blowing snow and very limited visibility. We all know that it can get windy at Beluga Point but on this day you literally couldn’t walk out to the Arm safely and we changed the location. The name of the game in Alaska is flexibility, and I’m thankful for clients who can change plans when the weather requires it.