Cheryl and Rick’s story didn’t take the usual path to a wedding day. They met as teenagers — thirteen and sixteen — and fell for each other over three whirlwind years, only for life to eventually pull them in different directions. Decades passed. Both went on to raise families and build separate lives, until Cheryl tracked Rick down on LinkedIn of all places, and the two picked up right where they’d left off, forty years later.
Three more years went by feeling, in their words, just like dating in high school again — and this time neither of them was willing to let go. Their elopement at Colony 29 in Palm Springs was the closing of that decades-long loop: a private, midcentury-modern property with clean architectural lines, a glassy pool, and the San Jacinto Mountains standing guard in the background — the kind of setting that turns an intimate ceremony into something that photographs like a film still.
There’s something fitting about a couple who found their way back to each other choosing a stripped-down elopement over a big production. No filler, no distractions — just two people who waited forty years to finish what they started, exchanging vows in the desert light.
