Some people are incredibly lucky to find their people early in their life. You hear the stories of best friends since people were babies, or high school sweethearts still being good for each other years later. For some finding their tribe takes more life experiences, sometimes it means finding someone else to see that what you thought was your person or group was actually not good for you at all. In the end, no matter how you found your forever people having a group of girls, guys, and a lover that makes your soul sing can be incomparable.
When Casey and Doug married this year they did so for the first time, while they had to reschedule due to COVID (like most of the rest of the world) and had tossed around the idea of eloping while they waited, they decided that the people they had cultivated in their life mattered just as much as their union and they wanted to celebrate with all. Doug's best friend and family flew in from out of town, Casey's soul sisters since she was little made the journey, and as a small community they were able to say their I-dos in a private location in the mountains before joining their tribe of friends for a reception that kept the town of Nederland dancing well into the night.
What was so striking about this celebration wasn't that they technically "eloped" with just a handful of people only to emerge in the reception filled with hundreds of people, but that all the people in their life were the right fit. Both Doug and Casey had spent time cultivating relationships that truly worked for them as people. While Casey had girlfriends since birth, finding Doug was not a straight forward journey and took getting rid of people that weren't good for her and accepting that Doug was a much better match for her hobbies, and life. Doug for his part left a whole state to follow Casey to Colorado and discovered that was a much better fit.
These two are a constant lesson that life is meant to be enjoyed, and while it might not be easy, it isn't hard when you find the right group of people. Despite all that happened the last couple of years, the tribe that came around these two were just as much of the magic that was their wedding day as all the little details they put into it.
