The first time Colton Dakota Elliott asked out Allie Londyn Hill, it didn’t go particularly well.
“In seventh grade he asked me to be his girlfriend for the first time,” Ms. Hill said. “And I was like, ‘No, I’d really like to be friends.’”
He tried again in eighth grade, making an unsubtle 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 they fell out of touch when Ms. Hill’s family moved to Jackson, Tenn., just before she began high school.
They always remained friendly on social media, liking each other’s Instagram stories and occasionally messaging. She moved to Memphis to get a bachelor’s degree in biology at Rhodes College, and he went to N.Y.U. and received a bachelor’s degree in politics, rights and development.
But when Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race in April 2020, Ms. Hill replied to some of Mr. Elliott’s Instagram stories about the news. Mr. Elliott had plenty of time to post on social media since he lost his bartending job to the pandemic, and Ms. Hill messaged him that they were probably the only Sanders supporters to ever live in the small conservative town of Lexington.
“It turned into ‘How have you been? What are you doing?’” Ms. Hill said.
“And then it became much more personal very quickly,” Mr. Elliott added.
Their direct 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 didn’t have a reason to continue paying rent in New York City, but he was holding 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.
“She was like, ‘Don’t stay there waiting around for someone to be able to make a trip. Why don’t you just move to your brother’s house, and she can go with you on the road trip?’” he recalled. “We both liked that idea enough that we turned it into a 12-day camping adventure.”
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Mr. Elliott packed up and drove to Memphis in May 2020 for their first date. They spent a weekend together, which affirmed that both of them wanted to go on this cross-country road trip.
The road to California was filled with challenges and detours: they were mostly camping to adhere to social distancing, but that meant they spent a few sleepless nights listening to howling coyotes and trying to reinforce their tent against windy rainstorms. They told each other they were falling in love on the second night of the trip, as they camped under the stars in Estes Park, Colo.
“We were just happy to be together,” Ms. Hill said. “And we were laughing the whole time.”
By the time they made it 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, Cory Elliott, in San Diego before moving back to Tennessee.
Ms. Hill and Mr. Elliott moved in with each other in Memphis during August 2021 and soon adopted two cats named Leo and Victor. Since Ms. 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. He flew to New York and back in one day to get her engagement ring, and planned another trip to Estes Park during Ms. Hill’s fall break in September 2023. He made a decoy itinerary for a fake camping trip and brought four bags of camping gear that they wouldn’t need to keep his proposal a secret.
They started their trip with a sunrise hike on Kruger Rock Trail, and Ms. Hill jokingly proposed to Mr. Elliott as they looked out over Estes Park. As she 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 Ms. 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’ll move to her first station: Oahu, Hawaii.
The couple had a self-uniting ceremony on March 5 at Sawmill Reservoir in Breckenridge, Colo. (Self-uniting ceremonies are legal in Colorado, along with a handful of other states.)
Guests included Ms. Hill’s parents, Matt and Shelley Hill, and Mr. Elliott’s parents, Jeff and Stacey Elliott, and two siblings: Ms. Hill’s younger brother, Hayden Hill, symbolically led the ceremony and Mr. Elliott’s brother, Cory Elliott, led the ring exchange.
“The only people that were required, legally, to bind us, were just us,” Mr. Elliott said. “We did it the way that we wanted to do it and it felt very ceremonious and official and lovely.”
