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Everyday Avenger

Save My Colorado Wedding – Making the World More Romantic…

My friend Sarah Roshan, a Colorado wedding photographer, has created “Save My Colorado Wedding”, working towards her mission to make the world more romantic. She doesn’t just want to save her client’s weddings during the catastrophic floods – she wants to help save as many weddings as possible. This is just one of the interviews she did this week about what has been happening in Colorado.

When Hurricane Ike hit Houston a few years ago, a lot of weddings were impacted by it. I was still mainly a wedding photographer at the time, and the day Ike hit I was in Louisiana photographing a wedding. Even being several hours away from Houston, we had 80 mile an hour winds because the storm was so huge. A number of Houston guests didn’t head over for the wedding because they did not want to travel, not after the disaster that evacuation was during Hurricane Rita a few years earlier.

Two weeks after Hurricane Ike, on my birthday, with the birthday bride (yes, she got married on her birthday!) I photographed another wedding at a venue still without power in Houston.

When you’re planning your wedding, things like catastrophic storms aren’t something you consider. Worse case scenario, you maybe plan for some rain on your wedding day. Yes, even along the Gulf Coast – I’ve lived in Houston for over 25 years, and only a handful of named storms have hit Houston in that time. You don’t plan for things like your venue still not having power two weeks after a storm. Or maybe your venue sliding off a mountain and floating away in a flood as is the case in Colorado right now.

If I lived in Colorado, I doubt that I would plan for anything as catastrophic as what they are seeing right now. It makes me furious that the media is giving it so little attention, as this flood they are experiencing is far worse than what we saw in Houston with Hurricane Ike. It feels like since the storm doesn’t have a name, it isn’t a big deal? Entire towns are destroyed.

Maybe it really hits home for me because I drove both the Boulder Canyon and the Big Thompson River Canyon in early August of this year. I have seen these places that are flooded right now. Beautiful, amazing places. Roads that are now gone. Not damaged, but holes left in them, washed away, GONE.

I just can’t put in to words how damn proud I am of Sarah right now. When the floods were just starting, she was already making a list of venues still open. When people started putting pleas for help out on Facebook to find a new, non-flooded venue for a wedding not even 48 hours away, she stepped in to help connect them with venues who could help. She has worked tirelessly for the past week, along with a team of planners and volunteers, to get people connected.

With all the media attention on the bad things in the world, it helps me to know that there are great people like Sarah out there. The human race as a whole is WONDERFUL. We step up. We help where we are needed. People like Sarah do, indeed, make the world a more romantic place. It gives me hope.

Sarah Roshan - Colorado Wedding Photographer