Alicia and Kevin have a special connection to the mountains. Alicia is from South Lake Tahoe, and Kevin hails from Durango, Colorado. They share a love and passion for skiing and have traveled the globe together on adventures. But it was a watering hole in Encinitas that proved a chance meeting place.
On a Saturday work night while a football playoff game played on the AM radio, Kevin thought to himself, “What and the hell am I doing?” So he reached for the car keys and headed out for the evening. Arriving at local restaurant, Union, he came across a young woman out with her girlfriends. “I decided to strike up a conversation with some curly headed guy at the end of the bar,” Alicia says of her first encounter with Kevin. The exchange was great. “Rich, vibrant, fun and easy,” she recalls. “After about 45 minutes I asked her if I’d ‘have to go to urgent care’ to see her again (that was her employer at the time),” Kevin says. She relented and offered the digits.
In January 2016, Alicia and Kevin went on one of many powder chases in Japan. They spent the entire week skiing some of the best, deepest and certainly the lightest snow of their lives. On the last day of skiing Asahi-dake, Kevin asked Alicia to stop on the run (in the middle of nowhere) to take a picture next to a snow-covered tree. He took out his phone to take a selfie. She thought, “Why does he want to take a picture, right here, right now?” So much so that she didn’t even notice the sparkling diamond hanging from Kevin’s phone.
“When we first started talking about a wedding, Kevin said he didn’t care about any of the details as long as we could roast a pig and have a live band,” says the bride. “Done and done. We roasted a 100-plus pound pig for the rehearsal dinner; and Kevin, after listening to more than 200 bands, found the most talented, fun live band in Los Angeles that drove up to play at our wedding and stayed with us on the property for three days.”
When the couple got engaged, they had no timeline; Kevin was in no hurry but Alicia had a different agenda. “When we found The HideOut, we knew that location encompassed everything we wanted in a venue,” says Alicia. “Unfortunately, the only date that was available for 2017 was only 11 weeks out at the time, so we jumped on it and planned our entire wedding in 11 weeks.”
The pair got married on top of a rock with the wedding party on each side. “We wrote our own vows that were very authentic, raw and honest,” she says. “Many of our guests commented on how heartfelt both of our vows were.“
Alicia shares she did have a significant dress malfunction right as the ceremony began. “As the music was starting and the groomsmen walked down the aisle, the button holding up my dress broke, and I started to freak out,” she recalls. “My dad ran in the kitchen and grabbed a knife and cut a hole in the dress for the button to slip over, just in time for me to walk down the aisle. Dad saved the day.”
A memorable moment from the reception included guests joining the band throughout the night. “Kevin played the guitar in college, and the band surprised him by asking him to join them for a song,” says Alicia. “I was screaming like a total groupie. What’s hotter than a rock star husband?!”
— Darren Elms
