bailey & zach | a love story from heaven
There are weddings I remember because they were beautiful.
There are weddings I remember because something hilarious happened, because the light was perfect, because the mountains showed off, or because everything came together exactly as it was supposed to.
And then there are weddings I know I will remember years from now because somewhere between arriving with my cameras and packing them away, I stopped feeling like the photographer.
Bailey and Zach's wedding was one of those.
Maybe it was the way their friends and family wrapped themselves around these two and built a wedding with their own hands.
Maybe it was the sound of the river moving behind us all day.
Maybe it was watching a father see his daughter as a bride.
Maybe it was the two photographs sitting quietly in the front row where two mothers should have been.
Or maybe it was simply Bailey and Zach.
Two people who somehow found each other in a tiny mountain town six years ago, although I have a suspicion their story may have started long before either of them knew it.
This is the story of their wedding day.
But first, I think you need to know how they got there.
Maybe Their Mothers Knew Before They Did
On January 26, 2003, Zach's mother, Diana, passed away from cancer.
Thirty-four days later, on March 1, 2003, Bailey's mother, Kathy, also passed away from cancer.
Less than five weeks apart.
Bailey and Zach didn't know each other then.
They were children in two completely separate families, living completely separate lives and learning far too young what it means to continue living when someone you love doesn't get to continue with you.
Years passed.
Life moved forward, as it somehow always does.
And eventually, Zach left Las Vegas and came to Colorado.
Of all the states.
Of all the towns.
Of all the places where he could have found work, he ended up at a small mountain lodge in Grant, Colorado called Kenosha Lodge.
He worked there as a handyman.
And working in housekeeping at that very same little lodge was a woman named Bailey.
That's where they met.
Technically.
But I have another version of the story that I like better.
Somewhere beyond what we can see, I imagine two mothers meeting.
Maybe Diana looked at Kathy.
Maybe Kathy looked at Diana.
Maybe they looked down at these two kids of theirs who had grown up without them and decided they could use a little help.
And maybe, just maybe, two moms in Heaven started playing Cupid.
Because Zach came all the way from Las Vegas to a tiny lodge in Grant, Colorado.
And there was Bailey.
Six years later, they would stand at that same lodge and promise each other forever.
Coincidence?
Maybe.
But I don't think so.
The Morning Began With Zach Building His Own Wedding
When I pulled into Kenosha Lodge on Bailey and Zach's wedding day, I found exactly what you would expect to find a few hours before a man gets married.
The groom working. Naturally.
Zach works construction, and apparently nobody had informed him that "groom" was supposed to be his only job that day.
He was preparing the ceremony area, arranging chairs, working on lights, getting the disco ball ready and making sure all of those final pieces were where they needed to be.
Project mode. Completely focused.
Which brings me to my first interaction with the groom.
I saw Zach and said hello.
Nothing.
I made a joking comment to him.
He looked at me like I was an absolutely unhinged stranger bothering him while he was trying to get something done.
And then he walked away.
I stood there with Anastasia and Christopher, the owners of Kenosha Lodge, trying to process what had just happened.
"Was that Zach's brother?"
No.
That was Zach.
The last time I had seen him, Zach had a shaved head. Now he had hair and facial hair, so for approximately thirty seconds I began questioning whether I had the wrong man.
Nope.
He just didn't recognize me.
Eventually his brain exited construction mode long enough for him to realize who I was.
"Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry."
We laughed.
And I have been incredibly mature about it ever since.
Mostly..... I only hold a tiny grudge, (kidding Zach)
It was actually the perfect beginning to this wedding because nothing about Bailey and Zach's day would turn out to be stiff or overly serious.
This was going to be fun.
Back Where Their Story Began
Kenosha Lodge isn't just where Bailey and Zach chose to get married. It is woven into their story.
The property sits tucked away in Grant, Colorado, surrounded by the kind of mountain scenery people travel across the country hoping to find. Kenosha Lodge doesn't feel like a commercial wedding venue. It feels discovered. The kind of place you almost want to keep secret once you find it.
The main house is called the Aspen House, and that's where I headed first to photograph some of the wedding details.
The house is larger inside than you would ever expect from looking at it. Wood floors creak beneath your feet. Tree trunks and branches have been incorporated into the architecture, wrapping around doorways, climbing walls and stretching across ceilings. A huge window fills the front of the house. Everything feels warm, rustic and wonderfully imperfect. Not "rustic" because someone bought decorations that said rustic on the box.
Actually rustic.
Actually Colorado.
Actually old mountain lodge.
Elsewhere on the property are smaller guest rooms where Bailey and Zach's friends and family could stay together. There's the Treehouse Room, where Zach would eventually get ready.
There's also a room called The Nest. Christopher told me that while he and Anastasia were working on the property, they discovered birds nesting near the doorway. They watched the eggs hatch, watched those tiny birds grow, and waited until they finally left before finishing the room.
And so it became The Nest.
I had been photographing details for about an hour when the sky started making threats. Then, it began to rain.
And just like that, a little luck found its way into Bailey and Zach’s wedding day.
They say rain on your wedding day is good luck, a symbol of blessings, new beginnings, and a marriage strong enough to weather whatever comes its way.
So while everyone else was hoping the clouds would pass, I couldn't help but think... Let it rain.
Once the rain stopped the clouds stayed, the harsh mountain sunlight disappeared. Everything softened, the trees deepened in color it was a photographer's dream.
The air cooled and the North Fork of the South Platte River flowing behind Kenosha Lodge seemed to get just a little louder. Colorado has been so dry this summer, and I remember feeling genuinely grateful that there was still water moving through that river. You could hear it from the property. That steady rushing sound followed us throughout the day. It cooled the air around us and gave the entire place this romantic soundtrack no wedding planner could have ordered.
The backyard of Kenosha Lodge feels almost hidden from the rest of the world. Paths follow the river in both directions, and farther down sits a beautiful bridge surrounded by trees, water and wildlife. For a small Colorado mountain wedding, I genuinely don't know how this place remains such a secret.
It is intimate without feeling cramped.
Rustic without feeling manufactured.
Private without feeling isolated.
And Anastasia and Christopher are some of the easiest and kindest venue owners I've had the pleasure of working around.
Kenosha Lodge isn't simply a beautiful place.
It has a soul.
And on this particular day, it was holding a wedding for two people whose story had begun right there.
Zach himself helped build and renovate pieces of Kenosha Lodge when he worked there. Including the deck attached to the Aspen House.
That deck would become important later.
Very important.
Bailey
There are some people you meet who simply have light around them.
I don't know how else to describe Bailey.
Think Goldie Hawn. Think Kate Hudson. Those people who seem to have this natural sparkle that doesn't feel performed. They're smiling because somewhere inside them, joy just seems to be their default setting.
That's Bailey.
I'm sure she has terrible days.
I'm sure she gets angry.
I'm sure there are mornings when she doesn't want to deal with anybody because she is, despite evidence to the contrary, an actual human being.
But she is one of those rare people whose energy enters a room before she does.
She's a beam of light.
Bailey and I actually met because of Nextdoor.
I had posted about my photography, she reached out, and several months before her wedding we spoke on the phone for the first time.
It was instant.
She wanted someone local, but as I listened to her talk, I remember thinking, This is my bride.
Not because of what she wanted her photographs to look like.
Because of who she was.
And by the time her wedding day arrived, photographing her didn't feel like showing up to work.
It felt like showing up for someone I already cared about.
Becoming the bride
Back inside the Aspen House, the energy was completely different.
Taylor Swift was playing.
Flowers were waiting.
Pineapple and Malibu were flowing.
There were children everywhere.
Seriously.
Babies everywhere.
And somehow it all worked.
Bailey sat while one of her longtime friends did her hair.
There was talking and laughing and people moving in and out of rooms, and that wonderful kind of wedding-day chaos that can't be staged.
This entire wedding had been built by a village.
Simone created the flowers for the wedding, using her talent to make something beautiful and personal for Bailey and Zach. But more importantly, she did it out of love for two people who mean so much to her.
Simone's wife, Nicole, went one step further.
She became an officiant specifically so she could marry them.
Their daughter, Scarlette, who also goes to the school where Bailey works, was the flower girl.
Little Charlie, Cody and Ryan's toddler, was the ring bearer.
Friends helped.
Family helped.
People offered whatever they knew how to do.
No one seemed to be asking, "Whose job is that?"
They simply saw something that needed to be done and did it.
That's love too.
We tend to think love is the part where two people stand at an altar and say vows.
But sometimes love looks like doing someone's hair.
Sometimes it looks like arranging flowers.
Sometimes it looks like cooking barbecue.
Sometimes it looks like becoming an officiant.
Sometimes it looks like setting up chairs.
This wedding was filled with those quieter versions of love.
In the Treehouse Room, the Groom Finally Became the Groom
Once Zach had successfully built, fixed, moved and arranged enough things to apparently earn permission to get married, he headed to the Treehouse Room.
That's where I went next to photograph his details and the guys getting ready.
And sitting there on the table was a gallon jug of water.
I immediately knew these were my people.
In my family, drinking water straight from a gallon jug is a running joke because apparently civilization invented glasses for a reason.
But gym people know.
Construction guys know.
A gallon jug is a perfectly respectable drinking vessel.
I felt vindicated.
Zach finally showered, got dressed and transformed from "guy working on the venue" into "groom."
The guys wore pink boutonnieres.
And once Zach was ready, he lit a cigar.
It suited him.
Some of my favorite portraits of him from the day aren't complicated photographs at all.
Just Zach.
Dressed for his wedding.
Cigar in hand.
Finally still.
There is something I love about photographing people doing something that actually belongs to them.
Not something a photographer found on Pinterest.
Something real.
Those photographs look like Zach because they are Zach.
Meanwhile, There Was a Necklace Waiting for Bailey
Back at the Aspen House, it was time for Bailey to put on her dress.
The room where she got dressed was dark.
Really dark.
As someone who loves natural light, I initially looked around that room and thought:
Well. This should be interesting.
I brought in my stand lights and used my flash, expecting simply to make the best of a difficult lighting situation.
Instead, something beautiful happened.
The warm artificial light fell against the dark wood of the Aspen House and created photographs that felt almost cinematic.
Old.
Warm.
Timeless.
Like still frames from an old film.
Sometimes photography reminds me that controlling everything isn't always the goal.
Sometimes the room gets a vote.
And that room knew exactly what Bailey's photographs needed.
But before the dress, there was one tiny detail I couldn't stop thinking about.
Around Bailey's neck was a gold necklace.
Hanging from it was her mother's wedding ring.
Beside the ring was a diamond heart pendant.
That heart had been a gift from Bailey's father, Mike, to her mother, Kathy.
Bailey's mother couldn't stand in that room and watch her daughter put on her wedding dress.
She couldn't button anything.
She couldn't fix a strand of hair.
She couldn't cry when she saw her little girl as a bride.
But part of her was there.
Her wedding ring rested against her daughter's heart.
And beside it rested a symbol of the love between Bailey's mother and father.
A piece of one marriage being carried into the beginning of another.
There are details I photograph because they're pretty.
And there are details I photograph because someday the photograph itself may become part of a family's history.
That necklace was the second kind.
Our Baby is getting married
Bailey's sister Suzanne, or Sue, is 23 years older than Bailey.
Yes.
Twenty-three.
Years ago, their mother went to the doctor believing she might be going into menopause.
She was not.
She was pregnant.
With Bailey.
So when Bailey came into this world, Sue was already an adult.
Bailey wasn't simply the little sister.
She was the baby.
And when their mother died when Bailey was only ten years old, the meaning of family changed again.
They say a photograph is worth a thousand words.
The photos of Bailey and Sue on this day aren't simply photos of two sisters standing together.
They tell a story.
You're looking at the adult sister who remembers when the baby arrived.
The sister who remembers their mother.
The sister who remembers a time Bailey was too young to remember for herself.
The sister who watched that little girl grow up.
And now, standing in front of her, that little girl was wearing a wedding dress.
Twenty-three years between them, an entire lifetime of memories behind them, and one very important person missing from the room.
Later, Sue would put into words what these photographs already seemed to say:
Our baby is getting married.
Brothers Will Be Brothers
Then there were Bailey's brothers.
Listen.
We tried to take normal photographs.
We really did.
But this family was not put on Earth for normal photographs.
One brother is extraordinarily tall compared with the rest of the siblings, which naturally meant the family had already developed an entire collection of jokes involving adoption and the mailman.
And the more inappropriate they could make a photograph, the happier everybody seemed to become.
Photo bombs.
Goofy poses.
People flipping off the camera.
One brother even bent over and mooned me.
WITH HIS PANTS COMPLETELY ON.
I feel this clarification is legally and morally important.
And I loved every second of it.
This wasn't a group worried about standing perfectly with their hands in the correct place and smiling politely at the photographer.
They wanted pictures that looked like them.
And this was them.
Ridiculous.
Affectionate.
Loud.
Funny.
Completely comfortable with one another.
Give me that over perfect any day.
Dad Was Waiting on a Deck Built by the Groom
Then it was time for the first look.
Not with Zach.
With Dad.
Bailey wanted her father, Mike, to see her before the ceremony.
The first look would happen on the back deck of the Aspen House.
There was only one logistical problem.
Getting Mike onto that deck required bringing him through the house.
Where Bailey was.
So Bailey went into hiding while we smuggled Mike through the Aspen House and onto the porch.
Somehow, nobody saw anybody they weren't supposed to see.
And then Bailey walked outside.
Toward her dad.
On the deck Zach had built.
I raised my camera.
And this was one of those moments when being a photographer and being a human being became difficult to separate.
Because I recently lost my own father.
I was blessed to have my dad at my wedding.
He got to see me as a bride.
He was there.
And standing behind my camera watching Mike look at his daughter, I couldn't stop thinking about how precious that privilege really is.
Bailey was missing her mom.
I am missing my dad.
Different stories.
Same empty chair inside your heart.
And grief has a strange way of recognizing grief.
I cried.
I tried to keep it together because this wasn't my moment.
It was theirs.
But losing a parent changes the way you understand photographs.
One day, a perfectly ordinary picture of your dad isn't ordinary anymore.
One day, the sound of his voice is something you would give anything to hear again.
One day, you realize that photographs aren't really about freezing what someone looks like.
They're proof.
Proof that this person stood here.
Proof that you loved them.
Proof that they loved you.
Proof that for one little moment in an impossibly fast life, you were together.
So yes.
Those photographs of Bailey and Mike mean something to me.
I suspect they always will.
Then It Was Zach's Turn
After the tears with Dad, it was time for Bailey to see the man she was about to marry.
Again, on that deck.
The one Zach built.
At Kenosha Lodge.
Where Zach once worked as the handyman.
Where Bailey once worked in housekeeping.
Where six years earlier their lives had crossed.
There is something almost unbearably poetic about that.
Zach had once stood on this property building things with his hands, having no idea that one day he would stand on something he built and turn around to see his future wife walking toward him.
You can't manufacture meaning like that.
You can't buy it.
You can't decorate it into existence.
It was already there.
They had lived it.
And now they were standing inside their own history.
Vans, Fireball, and a Ceremony That Was Completely Them
Before the ceremony began, there is one very important detail that must be documented correctly for historical accuracy.
The wedding party wore Vans.
Vans.
Not Converse.
I accidentally called them Converse once.
I was corrected immediately.
Lesson learned.
Everyone wore them, right down to the littlest members of the wedding party. Scarlet, Simone and Nicole's daughter, was the flower girl, and little Charlie, Cody and Ryan's toddler, was the ring bearer.
Tiny Vans included.
And honestly, it was perfect.
This wasn't a wedding built around doing things simply because that's what weddings are "supposed" to look like.
It looked like Bailey and Zach.
And apparently Vans weren't the only indication that this ceremony was going to play by its own rules.
Because before anyone walked down the aisle, Cody had an additional responsibility beyond being Zach's best man.
He had Fireball to distribute.
As Cody made his way down the aisle, he handed out shooters of Fireball to friends and family along the way.
Then, before the rest of the wedding party took their places, everything stopped for one very important piece of official business.
A toast.
Zach raised his shot.
Cody raised his.
Friends and family throughout the crowd raised theirs.
And together, before a single vow was spoken, they drank to Bailey and Zach.
There was laughter. There were cheers. There were probably a few faces made because Fireball is, after all, still Fireball.
And then the ceremony continued.
I loved every second of it.
Because in a matter of minutes, this ceremony would become deeply emotional.
There would be empty places where mothers should have been.
A father and sister would walk their girl down the aisle.
There would be vows.
There would be rocks.
There would be promises and tears.
But first?
They took a shot.
And somehow that combination of reverence and ridiculousness felt exactly right for these two.
This wasn't a ceremony designed around what a wedding was supposed to look like.
It was theirs.
The Vans were theirs.
The Fireball was theirs.
The laughter was theirs.
And everything that came next would be theirs, too.
Two Mothers Had Seats in the Front Row
Eventually, the chairs Zach had been arranging that morning filled with people.
Friends.
Family.
People who had traveled.
People who had helped build this day.
April sat in the front row with her husband.
April had been Kathy's friend.
They met while working at a daycare center, sharing days filled with kitchens, school buses and children.
When Kathy died, April did something extraordinary in the quietest possible way.
She stayed.
She stepped into Bailey's life and helped raise her.
Not as a replacement for Kathy.
No one replaces your mother.
But as another woman willing to love a little girl who had lost hers.
April was there when Bailey got married.
And so was Kathy.
Just differently.
In the front row were framed photographs honoring both mothers.
A photograph of Diana with her children when they were little.
A photograph of Kathy holding little Bailey.
Beside each photograph was a bouquet of flowers.
Two mothers.
Two empty physical seats.
Two women whose absence was impossible not to feel.
And yet somehow, neither of them felt entirely absent.
Mike and Sue Walked Their Baby Down the Aisle
Then Bailey appeared.
Her father, Mike, on one side.
Her sister Sue on the other.
And together, they walked her toward Zach.
I thought about that necklace again.
Kathy's wedding ring against Bailey's chest.
Her dad beside her.
Her sister beside her.
April in the front row.
Kathy's photograph waiting there.
It takes a village to raise a child.
Sometimes that village becomes even more important when someone is missing.
And Bailey's village had carried her all the way here.
Nicole stood at the front, an officiant because she loved these two enough to become one.
Simone's flowers surrounded them.
Their daughter scattered joy into the day as the flower girl.
Charlie served as the tiniest ring bearer.
The river kept moving behind us.
And two people who once met while working at this very lodge stood in front of everyone they loved and chose each other.
Rocks, Promises, and a First Kiss
And then there they were.
Bailey and Zach, standing together at the same little mountain lodge where they had first met six years earlier.
They exchanged their vows and made the promises that would carry them from this day into whatever comes next.
And then they exchanged something else.
Rocks.
One stone placed into the other's hand.
To anyone who didn't know their story, it might have seemed like a sweet little wedding ritual.
But these weren't just rocks.
There was an entire love story tucked inside them.
A story that began years before this ceremony. A story of giving each other rocks that dates all the way back to the beginning of their relationship. But that story deserves a moment of its own, so we’ll get to that.
But standing there during their ceremony, the meaning was beautifully simple.
Something that had become part of the way Bailey and Zach loved each other was now becoming part of the way they promised forever.
Then came the rings.
The final words.
And finally, the moment everyone had been waiting for.
Nicole pronounced them husband and wife.
Bailey and Zach kissed.
And the confetti flew.
For one tiny fraction of a second, everything seemed suspended in the mountain air.
The confetti.
The cheering.
The laughter.
That kiss.
My shutter kept firing because moments like that disappear almost before you realize you're standing inside one.
Six years after meeting at Kenosha Lodge, Bailey and Zach weren't the housekeeper and the handyman anymore.
They were husband and wife.
And somewhere above that little lodge, I'd like to think two moms were cheering louder than anyone.
Rocks, Because Apparently That's Romance
Remember those rocks they exchanged during the ceremony?
There was a reason.
Long before Bailey and Zach stood in front of their family and friends exchanging stones as part of their wedding vows, rocks had already become something of a love language between them.
It started simply.
One of them gave the other a rock.
Then the other returned the gesture.
And because Bailey and Zach apparently believe affection should always involve a little friendly competition, things escalated.
There was eventually a bucket of rocks.
And then Zach did what any perfectly reasonable man in love would do and filled the back of his vehicle with rocks for Bailey.
Because apparently the correct response to "I love you" is "I love you too, and now your suspension is involved."
But beneath the humor, there's something incredibly sweet about it.
Somewhere along the way, rocks became theirs.
A symbol of affection. Of playfulness. Of one-upping each other. Of a relationship where love doesn't always have to arrive wrapped in velvet or tied with a bow.
Sometimes it can simply be something you picked up and thought, This made me think of you.
And that's what made watching them exchange rocks during their wedding ceremony so meaningful.
They weren't adding some random wedding ritual because Pinterest told them to.
They were taking something that had belonged to their relationship from almost the beginning and carrying it with them into their marriage.
The rocks had been there while they were falling in love.
Now they would be there when they promised to keep choosing each other.
And maybe that's why I love this little piece of their story so much.
Diamonds are beautiful.
Flowers eventually fade.
But Bailey and Zach?
They built part of their love story out of something meant to last.
Then Everybody Else Joined Us
After Bailey and Zach had their moment, we brought in the families.
And whatever serenity existed during bride and groom portraits promptly disappeared.
Which was perfect.
Because this wasn't a quiet family.
These people laughed loudly.
They teased each other.
They photo-bombed.
They made inappropriate gestures.
They wanted goofy pictures.
They wanted real pictures.
And there were babies being passed around everywhere.
It felt less like working through a formal wedding shot list and more like trying to document a family reunion while everyone happened to be dressed nicely.
Exactly as it should have been.
Dinner Made by People Who Loved Them
Then everyone gathered to eat.
Even the food had a relationship attached to it.
Through Sue's connection to a man involved in barbecue competitions, the meat had been prepared especially for the wedding.
Sue helped bring everything in and set up the catering.
And it was absolutely delicious.
Bailey and Zach insisted that I eat.
They made sure I had something to drink.
They included me.
That may sound like a small detail.
It isn't.
Wedding photographers spend an extraordinary amount of time standing just outside other people's most intimate moments.
We are there, but we're working.
We witness everything while technically belonging to none of it.
But this family never made me feel like hired help.
They treated me like someone they wanted there.
Like a friend who happened to be carrying cameras.
That kindness stays with you.
Our Baby
After dinner came the toasts.
And Sue stood up to talk about her baby sister.
She told the story of being 23 years old when her mother went to the doctor thinking menopause had arrived, only to discover that Bailey had arrived instead.
She talked about their family.
She talked about Zach.
And then she said something I had never heard in a wedding toast before.
She said Bailey and Zach are puzzle pieces.
Because if two people are exactly alike, one of them is unnecessary.
They are different.
They have different edges.
Different strengths.
Different ways of moving through the world.
And somehow those differences meet.
They fit.
Two puzzle pieces.
I don't know that I will ever hear that analogy again without thinking of them.
Because marriage isn't really about finding another version of yourself.
It's about finding the person whose edges somehow make sense beside yours.
Then everyone paused the wedding celebration long enough to sing Happy Birthday to Frank, one of their guests.
Because even on Bailey and Zach's day, there was room to celebrate someone else.
Again, that tells you something about these people.
And Then a 1936 Auburn Speedster Appeared
As if the mountains, river, rain, confetti, cigars and emotional devastation weren't enough for one photographer, Mr. Martin arrived with a 1936 Auburn Speedster.
A family friend had brought this extraordinary car for Bailey and Zach to enjoy.
They took it for a little joyride.
And I got to photograph them with it.
The moment I saw Bailey and Zach around that car, I knew those photographs needed to feel different.
They didn't belong entirely in 2026.
I wanted some of them to feel like something their grandchildren might discover decades from now inside an old box.
So I created some in color. Some in black and white. And some with an old sepia warmth.
There is something beautifully strange about intentionally creating a photograph today that already feels like a memory.
Bailey beside that car. Zach beside her. The mountains behind them.
For a moment, time became difficult to place.
And maybe that's fitting.
Because someday these photographs will be old.
Someday Bailey and Zach will look different.
Someday the people in these photographs will look impossibly young to the generations who come after them.
Someday a grandchild may point at one and ask:
"Was that really you?"
And they'll get to tell the story.
One Last Dance Before I Left Them
Then came their first dance.
By then, the day had softened into evening.
The wedding Zach had spent the morning physically preparing was now simply happening around them.
The chairs had been used. The vows had been spoken. Dinner had been eaten. The speeches had been given.
The Speedster had carried them away and brought them back.
And now there was nothing left to build.
Nothing left to set up.
Nothing left to prepare.
Just Bailey.
Just Zach.
Husband and wife.
Dancing.
I watched through my camera and thought about how much had happened between the first photograph I'd taken that day and this one.
And how much had happened long before I ever arrived.
The People We Carry With Us
I cried about three times during Bailey and Zach's wedding. I don't remember exactly when each one happened.
But I know why.
Diana and Kathy were everywhere that day.
Not physically. And that's the cruelest part of losing someone. There are moments when you would give anything for the physical.
One more hug.
One more photograph.
One more chance to hear them say your name.
Bailey and Zach didn't get that with their mothers on their wedding day.
I don't get that with my dad anymore.
And somewhere during this wedding, those two kinds of grief touched.
But this day also reminded me that the people we lose don't simply disappear from our stories.
Kathy was there in the wedding ring resting against Bailey's heart. She was in Sue's stories, in April sitting in the front row, in Mike walking his daughter down the aisle, and in that photograph of a mother holding her little girl.
Diana was there too. In the photograph with her children and, most of all, in the son standing beneath the Colorado sky becoming someone's husband.
Maybe that's the strange thing about losing someone we love. They're gone, but their place in our story isn't.
They live in the stories we tell.
In the traditions we keep.
In the people we become.
And in the people we choose to love.
Which brings me right back to the beginning.
January 26, 2003.
March 1, 2003.
Two mothers gone less than five weeks apart.
Two children who didn't even know the other existed.
Years later, a man would leave Las Vegas and somehow find his way to a tiny mountain lodge in Grant, Colorado.
And a woman would be there.
They would meet.
They would fall in love.
And six years later, on a cloudy summer day, they would return to the exact place where they first found one another and become husband and wife.
You can call that coincidence.
Maybe it was.
But maybe it was love from Heaven.
I like to picture Diana and Kathy together somewhere beyond what we understand, watching their photographs sitting side by side in that front row.
Watching Mike and Sue walk Bailey toward Zach.
Watching rocks pass from one hand to another.
Watching their children promise forever and kiss beneath falling confetti.
And maybe, when it was all over, those two moms looked at each other and smiled.
Because somehow, across all those years, all those miles, all that loss and all that life... their babies found each other.
