An Intimate Yosemite National Park Wedding – Camilla & Matt

If you’ve been on the Marry Me Ink Facebook over the weekend you would have seen me sneak peek the gorgeous tattooed bride Camilla and Matt at Yosemite Park – Camilla is wearing a cute dress from Monsoon too! Today I’m so excited to share with you their wedding that took place at Redwoods from VeVi Photography. The views of the wedding ceremony are breathtaking!

Matt plays in a USA based death metal band, Exhumed, who were touring Europe extensively. Being really hungover I decided to go along to their show in London one evening, and thus met him there. I came stumbling out the toilets and I think he complimented me on my shirt I was wearing- which was a Tank Filth Hounds of Hades shirt. We managed to find each other on the social media world and exchanged messages for about a month before deciding to meet up in Amsterdam to see Iron Maiden – our “First Date” lasted almost a week as we traversed Amsterdam, London and Reading together.

Obviously, doing long distance and having 6000 miles between you means a lot of your family and friends don’t know about your story together or just hang out with you much in general, so we had a photo timeline out of our key dates and pictures from the 3 years. Seeing as we both LOVE heavy metal and Metallica we made a joke around the album “Ride the Lightning” and made a sign saying “Bride the Lightning” with our date on it. We don’t know if anyone else found it funny, but we sure did!

Being on a tight budget and very remote in a National Park we did a lot of everything ourselves. Pretty much everything including decorating jars, the archway, the bouquets, folding the napkins…We did most of it two days before  the wedding. Mostly me, Matt and the photographer we trapped in the middle of nowhere in Yosemite with us, but I have to say if it wasn’t for my photographer, Andreea, I would have been totally lost. She came and rescued the day and taught me how to arrange flowers, do origami napkins and just generally helped everything. I think the most fun was those two days of drinking while decorating things way up in the mountains. The arch was her idea and she made it in the morning of the wedding with leftover flowers and twigs! (hurray for jetlag!) We were so thankful and don’t think we have told her enough how amazing she is!

Due to the absolute nightmare I had for years with the US visa, we had to postpone our wedding. Originally it was supposed to be in August a year earlier. I was most excited about the day finally coming! That was the highlight for me at the end of a long immigration process… Finally, both us dressing up, having an amazing day (in the rain) and just amazing pictures of it all (we had Yosemite National Park as our backdrop!) and saying our vows in front of family and friends. The party was pretty wild!

Enjoy your day with friends and family – it’s one of the most fun days ever! Do your planning and DIYing well in advance, men – listen to the bride and help do any DIY stuff in advance! Last minute arrangements can be a meltdown reason if you’re not lucky enough to have someone around who can help out. We didn’t order enough flowers, didn’t realize this until a day before the wedding and didn’t order a marquee because we wanted an outdoor wedding. By the time we realized it was going to rain it was impossible to get a marquee way up in Yosemite! Thankfully we managed to sort out the flower situation and a wedding in the rain  turned out to be quite us.

How gorgeous is Camilla and Matt’s wedding?! I love that they embraced the rain on their wedding day – It does look amazing! Thank you to them both and to Andreaa of VeVi Photography for sharing their day with Marry Me Ink.

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