As Blake Hogge reached for his mom’s hand to walk down the aisle on his wedding day, he noticed something strange.

The sleeves of his white velvet jacket were speckled with little dots of gray dust, and more was falling from the sky. He looked over at his mom, Lisa Hogge. Her light green chiffon dress was sprinkled with it, too. Blake Hogge couldn’t help but start laughing.

He and his groom, Trystan Nickovich, spent the last 72 harried hours moving their ceremony to this backyard spot: more than 170 miles and a three-hour drive away from where they had originally planned to get married after a wildfire suddenly destroyed their venue.

And now, even here, it was raining ash.

“It was right when our ceremony started,” Hogge, 34, recalled with a smile. “It looked apocalyptic. The sky turned orange.”

But Hogge is grateful. Even as a place he loved burned and all their plans went up in smoke, he still got to stand next to the man he loves and vow to spend the rest of their lives together.

“Ugh, it’s so cheesy,” Hogge groaned, jokingly scolding himself for being mushy. “But I was just so excited to get married.”

Hogge and Nickovich had planned to get married at a pine-filled campsite on Beaver Mountain. As certain as they were about their love for each other, once engaged, they immediately knew that’s where they wanted to wed.

It was just down the dirt road from Hogge’s parents’ cabin, where they planned to hold the reception. Hogge and his twin brother, Dylan, had grown up visiting that spot each summer, playing pirates or cowboys as they darted through the trees and jumped in the water, coming back to the cabin covered in mud.

“We’ve been going there since we were born,” Hogge said.

On Monday, June 22, like many who owned property in the area, they received notice that the Cottonwood Fire had sparked. Hogge’s parents, Lisa and Daren, were on Interstate 15, driving to Beaver to start setting up when they got the alert.

By then, the blaze had torn through about 50 acres of the area they loved. Hogge and Nickovich thought it might still be OK.

But by Tuesday, the fire had ballooned to 50 times that size. All residents were evacuated.

They were supposed to marry three days later, on Friday, June 26.

“At that point,” Hogge said, “I knew the wedding wasn’t going to happen where’d we’d been planning.”

The Cottonwood Fire continues to burn more than a month later. At 97,464 acres, it’s now considered 90% contained, marking the boundary where firefighters feel confident flames won’t cross.

It’s among the biggest, costliest and most destructive wildfires in state history.

On the night of their rehearsal dinner, Hogge’s family learned their cabin was one of the estimated 150 structures decimated by the blaze.

72 hours to create magic

Moving a wedding that took months to organize in just 72 hours is no easy feat.

Hogge’s parents offered up their backyard at their home in Alpine for a new location, a quick switch Nickovich calls “the luckiest thing in the world.”

But it also meant asking each vendor to reroute everything — from the couple’s plum-and-coral flower arrangements to the wooden pews selected for ceremony seating — nearly 200 miles north with little notice.

Luckily, nothing had been delivered to the Beaver cabin yet.

The couple hoped to preserve as much as they could of the vintage-inspired wedding they carefully mapped out, with natural elements nestled alongside towering candles, chandeliers and an alter draped in billowing maroon fabric.

Hogge, a wedding and editorial photographer who’s witnessed plenty of nuptials, was determined to make it happen.

The couple first met on Tinder in 2021, when they got so caught up in conversation on their first date that they missed the last TRAX train for the night. They spent another 30 minutes walking, talking even more.

“I didn’t want the date to end,” Hogge said.

They got engaged in September 2025, when Nickovich recreated their second date, eating a sushi picnic in Emigration Canyon. It’s why the ceremony’s natural setting and touches were so important to them; they’ve spent much of their relationship in the outdoors.

Hogge said all the vendors went above and beyond to create magic.

Even his brother, Dylan Hogge, got emotional over the end result: “I bawled my eyes out when I saw everything.”

“I’m in awe of what everyone was able to do in such a short amount of time,” he added.

The only vendor who couldn’t make it was the couple’s caterer, whose shop is in Beaver. But it was OK, Blake Hogge and Nickovich both told her. “Please take care of yourself,” they said.

And the cake was secured by one of the grooms himself. Nickovich, a baker at Tulie Bakery in Salt Lake City, handmade three separate cakes for the occasion: a brown-butter olive oil cake, a chocolate cake and a vanilla cake.

‘We pulled off a miracle’

Some parts of the day turned out even better than planned.

“There were definitely some silver linings to it,” Nickovich said.

The two got ready together in the morning, and like Hogge, Nickovich’s mom, Tonja, also walked him down the aisle.

Under the alter they’d envisioned, the two exchanged handwritten vows they hadn’t intended to read out loud. Each said they searched for a kind and patient partner, and the wedding rearrangements were an unexpected test. Both passed, they said with a laugh.

They exchanged rings they got on Etsy with matching single diamonds in the middle and took a picture of them under the strange, orange sky.

They ate cake and danced, too. Their song was Linda Ronstadt’s 1970s hit “Long, Long Time.”

They didn’t realize their ceremony fell on the 11-year anniversary of when gay marriage was legalized in the U.S., a fact they cherish now and are glad they didn’t change.

Blake Hogge came out in his early 30s, after growing up in the conservative, Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Dylan Hogge said seeing his twin live openly encouraged him, and he came out shortly after. Their parents were welcoming and supportive.

“Coming out in Utah has its challenges,” Blake Hogge said. “But everyone was so great about it.”

That includes the twins’ 93-year-old grandmother, who wasn’t going to be able to make the long drive to Beaver. But with the move to Alpine, she was able to come.

“It was a very emotional week for us all,” Hogge said. “But we pulled off a miracle.”

Not long after Hogge and Nickovich said “I do,” the sky shifted back to a brilliant, promising blue.