Getting Married in the Electric Forest (Edited for ease of read and updated with photos)

My Electric Forest Experience

Hello Everyone, Today I would like to share with you something very special to me, My Electric Forest experience. My wife and I have been together for 8 yrs and were engaged for 7yrs. We heard of a place where people gather and listen to music with a sense of community and love, this is Electric Forest. First we decided to go to the forest just for the normal experience but once we had looked up videos and pictures of the event we knew it was the and perfect place to honor our true love and enter into marriage. This is a 5 day event of camping and music and we had never been camping so had to buy everything needed for a long camping trip, needless to say it was pretty expensive.

We decided we wanted the full experience so we splurged for Good Life tickets(V.I.P.) these tickets gave you the luxury of air conditioned flushable portable bathroom trailers along with unlimited showers in the shower trailers along with shorter lines and larger camp space. Getting these tickets was no easy task, my girlfriend and I both opened up our computers made an account and waited for the drop of 11am for the tickets to go on sale, we had planned to buy the tickets with whatever account could get them first. We kept refreshing excitedly knowing that we only had a small window of opportunity once the tickets were available, this window was smaller then we even thought. So tickets are available and we each rush to get them in our carts and paid for..... my girlfriend says "I GOT THEM IN THE CART" this is good because it was only 15 seconds into the tickets going on sale. She was on her Macbook and I was on our home pc, I was requested to captcha and she was not, there was about a 5 second delay due to this and when I went to place the tickets in my cart they were SOLD OUT!!! 20 seconds after being released!!! Our hearts dropped and also we felt a great rush of adrenaline knowing this dream was becoming a reality. V.I.P was extremely important due to my girlfriends intestinal condition known as Gastroparesis. So now we have tickets and 4 months to prepare (we purchased the camping stuff during this time). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastroparesis

My girlfriend is a big Sailor Moon fan and loves to cosplay so she decided long ago she wanted to be married in a Princess Serenity dress. Not knowing anyone who could custom make it in time, being it was cosplay season, we reached out and got a reference from a friend. We met with the seamstress and she seemed very nice and knowledgeable about the craft, also she said she could make the dress and have it finished in time. We decide to go with this particular seamstress and put down an $800 deposit for the dress and required another $800 upon finishing the dress.

Time passes and we come to the first fitting. The seamstress makes an appointment to meet with my girlfriend and I at 12:00pm that day, then changes it to 1pm. We inform her we have a wedding shower later that afternoon and would like to be on time and she agrees that will be fine. the time reaches 12:57 and we haven't heard from her so we call. She tells us she is still an hour away and will be at our place in 1 hour, 1 hour passes and she calls us back still 30 minutes out and says the Highway is closed, which is true, and there is no detour..... which is very false. At this point she gives up not wanting to sit in traffic and never shows up. We end up being 1.5 hours late for the wedding shower.

The next week we drive 2.5 hours to her business. Things went pleasantly and on our way home we enjoyed some local dinner food in Duluth,MN that was amazing. Some weeks pass and we Finally start to see some progression on the dress but are informed that the fabric she had ordered was damaged and the dress would not be done on time, my girlfriend was obviously devastated but eventually came to terms with the fact she wouldn't have the dress she wanted to get married in.

Now its time to pack the car. we end up packing the car to the max barely having room to move ourselves. We get our spirits up for the long drive from St. Paul,MN to Rothbury, MI. We leave the house about 3:15am. As we drive away from the house we get about 2 miles away from home. We are driving down a busy street when a car passes, as the car passes we hear its breaks screech quick and the car continues on. I look in the rear view mirror and I see something horrific... they had hit a cat and I could see it moving. I whip a u-turn and drive to the cats aid as fast as I can. I jump out of the car and run full speed but when I arrive to help the kitty was already passed away.

This was devastating, my girlfriend and I are huge cat lovers and fostered cats for 6yrs along with having 4 cats of our own. We turn around and go back home. My girlfriend crying at the top of her lungs in horror as I try to hold it together til we get back home. We get home and I lose it, I break down just as bad as her. I will never forget what I saw that day, the images will forever be burned in my memory. That being said I am very happy I was there to help if help could have been provided.

3 hours later we feel okay enough to try this again. We leave the house avoiding the same route not wanting to be triggered by the scene of the accident. We make a couple stops and smoke a couple joints to help with our anxiety. About halfway there we decide to bury our last vacuum sealed joint at a rest stop for the way back. The rest of the drive was fairly dull except some really hard rain as we got into Michigan.

Excitement rises as we approach the forest. Our GPS tells us exactly how far away we are which makes our anticipation swell. We drive in and get a quick vehicle search, standard operation as we contact our friend who saved us a campsite next to them since we were late showing up. We all meet up and I set up the tent as my girlfriend relays the horrible thing we experienced.

Our friend Adam is there, he is the one that saved us the spot and the link between us what is called our "forest fam". Adam got ordained so he could legally marry us at the event. We are now in the campgrounds and it's about 2am, we can hear and see live music right from our campsite at the after party V.I.P. stage where famous musicians play until the sun comes up(last year Skrillex played) this is every night of the event. We listen to some music and then sleep til about 10am.

We wake up and get ready for the day excited about entering the Electric Forest Event grounds for the first time. I grab the gopro and start recording. We hit some shows throughout the day taking a short day nap between sets. Then night falls and we reenter the forest...... this is definitely a different experience then during the day. Every part of the forest is lit up in bright colors like psychedelic fantasy land. The energy so great and loving. This theme carries through the weekend and is better explained by watching the video then my words could ever do justice.

Friday night comes and its time to get married. We chose a spot we both thought would be fitting and met up with friends for the ceremony. Adam opens up with dialogue from the movie The Princess Bride "Maiwage has bwought us togeva" classic and perfect being it is one of our favorite movies. We say our "I do's" and then a huge group hug consisting of friends and strangers happens naturally. Now she is my Wife. I couldn't be happier. We seen some more great artist perform and call it a night.

Saturday, the big day. String Cheese Incident and Bassnectar play today. Bassnectar is a favorite of my wife's and we were told not to miss the String Cheese show. We prep to go from the camp grounds into the event. At this time our camping neighbor offers us a magic mushroom chocolate bar and we accept. We split half and dive into the event. The music was great and String Cheese put on a phenomenal show packed with acrobatics huge props and great music, perfect for a light mushroom trip. Bassnectar was next was equally great.

After that we rested well and experienced the last day watching some artists and relaxing. We said our goodbyes, packed up the campsite and headed home making sure to stop and dig up that joint we buried.

It was such an amazing experience. I hope you all enjoyed this post. I don't have any writing experience and hope this comes across organic enough for you all. Thanks for reading and watching the video of on of the best experiences of my life.

Here is the original post I made, I have leaned more about making readable posts and wanted to edit this experience in a more readable format. Thanks for reading https://steemit.com/video/@kiddarko/getting-married-in-the-electric-forest

Feel free to check out my other videos and subscribe to my personal YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeVunjyaIoTeSInaZWt3GQQ

These are all my own original photos taken by My wife and I on June 22-26 2016