As a professional wedding photographer, Shannon Skloss has spent the last eight years capturing couples in love on their big day. But on June 20, 2015, it was Shannon’s turn to be in front of the camera when she wed Clinton Alexander in an intimate ceremony overlooking the ocean in Negril, Jamaica.

They met more than a decade prior, when Shannon, then a student at the University of Texas at Austin, would visit friends at Texas A&M, where Clinton was studying. Though just acquaintances, Clinton never forgot the beautiful blond. Ten years later when he moved to Dallas, where Shannon had settled after graduating, he knew just whom to call.

“He was like, ‘I’m moving to Dallas. Maybe you can show me around and I can meet some of your friends since I don’t really know anybody,’” Shannon remembers. Confesses Clinton slyly: “I knew exactly what I was doing.”

His scheming worked. They hit it off and started dating. Nearly a year later, while on vacation in Jamaica following a wedding that Shannon photographed, Clinton popped the question. With a shared passion for travel and Shannon’s experience shooting destination weddings, the couple decided that was the route they wanted to take—and their minds immediately returned to Jamaica. “We just fell in love with that country and everything about it,” Shannon says.

The bride had three priorities for her big day: Finding a venue with spectacular scenery, her dress, and, naturally, photography. She and Clinton booked the Rockhouse Hotel, a 32-villa seaside property that had the natural vistas and Jamaican charm they were looking for. She found her dress on a chance visit to the Vera Wang flagship store while on a mother-daughter vacation to San Francisco. And she turned to industry friend Jason Huang of Table4 Weddings to capture it all on camera and Charla Storey in Dallas for her bridals.

For the next 15 months, Shannon and Clinton worked together to perfect every detail of their ceremony and reception. The only thing they disagreed on was what color tie Clinton would wear—she wanted peach; he wanted white. “I bought him both and said, ‘Wear whichever one you want the day of the wedding. Just surprise me,’” Shannon laughs.

But concerns over neck accessories would pale in comparison to a series of mishaps that preceded the big event. For starters, Clinton couldn’t find his passport the night before they were scheduled to fly to Jamaica. An early-morning visit to the local passport office later, they were on the plane—only to land and find that their luggage, which contained all of the wedding decor, had been lost in transit. (Thankfully it was recovered just in time.)

“If it weren’t for Nathan and Krisi [Johnson] of GRO, our wedding would’ve been complete chaos,” Shannon says. “They even spent the night in the airport the night before the wedding, trying to sort out details to make our big day perfect.”

All of the headaches led Shannon and Clinton to make small edits to their vows the night before the wedding. “We were, like, ‘If we can get through all this, we’re going to be fine,’” Shannon says.

Everything went off without a hitch—Clinton even wore the peach tie.

—Jessica Otte

With a shared passion for travel and Shannon’s experience shooting destination weddings, the couple decided that was the route they wanted to take—and their minds immediately returned to Jamaica.