There have been crazy wedding themes and ultimate destination wedding stories in the news lately, but rarely do you hear of a young couple keeping it this real when planning a wedding. Rather than having a splashy, traditional wedding, Michigan couple Joseph Crist and Laura Burnett have decided to take their savings and walk to their wedding, all the way to the West Coast.
The couple, who have known each other since they were in middle school, has long been talking about traveling the country on foot, even before the two were talking about marriage, but now their wedding has given them a destination; Las Vegas.
“We don’t like the idea of spending thousands of dollars on one day for a wedding when we can do something like this,” Burnett told the Observer & Eccentric.
Between the two, they have saved about $45000, most of which they expect to spend on food, and have said that their parents will help out if their savings aren’t enough.
The mapping of the trip, was left up to Burnett; after leaving Michigan, the couple plans to walk through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona before reaching their marriage destination in Nevada.
The newlyweds then plan to splurge on a few nights at a resort before continuing their walk to Los Angeles, after which they plan to return home to Michigan via plane. The roughly 2,500 mile walk will begin mid-April, and take them past the Mojave Desert and Grand Canyon before they end up in Las Vegas to exchange wedding rings, hopefully sometime in September.
But this is apparently about more than just a wedding adventure; the couple has another ultimate goal in mind. “We’re looking for a place where we might want to live,” Crist told the Observer & Eccentric.