Sometimes you meet your sweetheart in high school.  Sometimes you don't realize you met your sweetheart in high school until more than a decade later.  So goes the story of Steph and James.  They grew up in the same small town in northern Minnesota.  They played the same position on their respective hockey teams.  They know all the same people and have a long shared story but it wasn't until James was finishing medical school that their stories collided again.

Here are two people ready for any adventure life throws at them, including walking down a completely derelict set of stairs to get to the bottom of the Stone Arch Bridge just so we could get the light just right.  So as they prepare for their Colorado mountaintop nuptials they opted for a city session in Minneapolis that felt just like a great date night; good cafes, long walks and rooftop lawn bowling complete with a tornado warning.

If ever you're in Minneapolis and need a great date night, head to Brit's Pub for rooftop lawn bowling and cold beverages.  Just don't forget to mind the gap.

The day began with the blazing Midwest sun, set on being unrelenting in the heat and humidity of the first Sunday in July.  The sky was clear and the world woke to what felt like any other day, except for Chris and Carolyn and their families.  Because this hot and humid Sunday was a day hoped and prayed over for a long time and it was finally here.  No amount of thunderstorm warnings or heat index spikes could have dampened the spirit of this day.  

As the day began and it was time for Carolyn to put her dress on, the women in her life began filtering into the room to help with bustles and clasps and making sure that her mother's pearls were just right.  Here she stood, holding on to these moments with the people who have shaped her since the beginning, getting ready to hold on to the man who would shape her forever.  As we waited under cover of shade at the Historic Wagner Farm, I told Chris that Carolyn looked amazing.  His only response was "she always does."  Granted, today, she nearly knocked him off his feet as he turned around and couldn't wait to wrap his arms around her.

This is how the day went.  As Walt Whitman once said "We were together, I forget the rest."  They walked hand in hand wherever they went.  They smiled endlessly as family members gave toasts thanking God that Chris and Carolyn are a perfect match.  They spent time just breathing as a family and in all of it, the heat didn't matter, because the sun shone for them that day and no one could convince me otherwise.