Maria and Luca didn't want a big wedding. They wanted Italy.

We met before sunrise on a quiet stretch of the Amalfi Coast, salt air still cool, the cliffs turning gold as the light came up. No guests, no schedule to keep. Just the two of them and the sound of waves below.

They'd flown in from Chicago three days earlier with one suitcase between them and a loose plan to "figure it out once we got there." That's exactly what we did. We scouted the cliffside spot the evening before, walking down a narrow path as the light went soft, and Maria said, "this one, this is it," before I'd even pulled out my camera.

The morning of, Luca showed up holding his shoes, having walked the last stretch barefoot so he wouldn't slip on the wet stone. Maria wore her mother's veil, the same one from a wedding video she'd watched a hundred times growing up. Small details like that tend to matter more than anything else on a day like this.

They read their vows standing on a stone ledge overlooking the water. Luca's hands were shaking. Maria laughed through most of it, then cried during the part where he mentioned her grandmother. The officiant, a friend of theirs, kept things short. Nobody seemed to mind that the whole thing took less than ten minutes.

After, we wandered through Positano's narrow streets, stopped for espresso at a tiny counter that didn't have a name on the door, and let the morning unfold however it wanted to. We climbed steps nobody warns you about, ducked into a bakery for something we couldn't pronounce, and ended up sitting on a sea wall just talking, cameras down, for almost an hour.

That's the thing about eloping here. There's no rush. Just you, the coast, and a few hours that feel like they belong only to you.

If you're dreaming of something similar, I'd love to hear about it.