The first time Colton Dakota Elliott asked Allie Londyn Hill out, it didn’t go too well.
“He asked me to be his girlfriend for the first time in seventh grade,” Ms. Hill said. “And I said, ‘No, I’d really like to be friends.’
He tried again in eighth grade, making a subtle post about his crush on Facebook, but Ms. Hill still wasn’t interested.
Ms. Hill, 27, and Mr. Elliott, 26, both lived in Lexington, Tenn., at the time, but moved away when Ms. Hill’s family moved to Jackson, Tenn., just before she started high school.
They have always remained friendly on social media, liking each other’s Instagram stories and messaging each other from time to time. She moved to Memphis to get a biology degree at Rhodes College, and he went to NYU and got a degree in politics, rights and development.
But when Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race in April 2020, Ms. Hill responded to some of Mr. Elliott’s Instagram stories about the news. Mr. Elliott had plenty of time to post on social media after losing his job as a bartender due to the pandemic, and Ms. Hill texted him that they were probably the only Sanders supporters ever to live in the small conservative town of Lexington.
“It turned into ‘How have you been?’ What are you doing;” said Mrs. Hill.
“And then it got a lot more personal very quickly,” Mr. Elliott added.
Their instant messages turned into texts and FaceTime calls, with Mr. Elliott in New York and Ms. Hill in Memphis studying dentistry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
With no job and no idea when the pandemic would end, Mr. Elliott had no reason to continue paying rent in New York, but held out hope that Ms. Hill might visit. After a few weeks of talking, Mr. Elliott took his mother’s advice and asked Ms. Hill to help him move to San Diego, where his brother and fiancée lived.
“He was saying, ‘Don’t sit there waiting for someone to be able to take a trip. Why don’t you just move into your brother’s house and he can go on the road trip with you?” he remembers. “We both loved the idea so much that we turned it into a 12-day camping adventure.”
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Mr. Elliot packed up and drove to Memphis in May 2020 for their first date. They spent a weekend together, which confirmed that they both wanted to go on this cross-country road trip.
The road to California was full of challenges and detours: mostly they camped to maintain social distancing, but that meant they spent some sleepless nights listening to howling coyotes and trying to fortify their tent against blizzards. They told each other they fell in love on the second night of the trip, as they camped under the stars in Estes Park, Colo.
“We were happy to be together,” Ms Hill said. “And we laughed the whole time.”
By the time they got to San Francisco — where Ms. Hill would fly back to Memphis — they were official.
Mr. Elliott spent less than three weeks living with one of his older brothers, Corey Elliott, in San Diego before returning to Tennessee.
Ms. Hill and Mr. Elliott moved in with each other in Memphis in August 2021 and soon adopted two cats named Leo and Victor. Since Mrs. Hill is doing her dental school through a special Army program, they decided to get married before she graduates in 2024.
Mr. Elliott, a bartender at a craft cocktail bar called Cameo, still wanted a surprise marriage proposal. She flew to New York and returned in one day to pick up her engagement ring and planned another trip to Estes Park during Mrs. Hill’s fall break in September 2023. She made a decoy itinerary for a fake camping trip and brought four bags of camping gear that they wouldn’t have to keep his proposal a secret.
They started their trip with a sunrise hike on the Kruger Rock Trail, and Ms. Hill jokingly proposed to Mr. Elliott as they looked out over Estes Park. As he stood up, a photographer emerged from the bushes and Mr. Elliott dropped to one knee. They spent the rest of the trip celebrating with 16 friends, who had flown to Colorado to surprise Mrs. Hill.
Ms. Hill and Mr. Elliott celebrated their engagement with 60 friends and family members at a Memphis brewery in October and planned an intimate wedding during Ms. Hill’s spring break. After she graduates, they will move to her first stop: Oahu, Hawaii.
The couple had a self-union ceremony on March 5 at Sawmill Reservoir in Breckenridge, Colo. (Self-union ceremonies are legal in Colorado, along with a handful of other states.)
The guests were Mrs. Hill’s parents, Matt and Shelley Hill, and the parents of Mr. Elliott, Jeff and Stacey Elliott, and two siblings: Mrs. Hill’s younger brother, Hayden Hill, officiated the ceremony, and Mr. Elliott’s brother, Cory Elliott. the exchange of rings.
“The only people who legally had to bind us were just us,” Mr. Elliott said. “We did it the way we wanted and it felt very ceremonial and solemn and wonderful.”