Who’s Aly?…

My story started across the planet in Salt Lake City, Utah in the U.S.

I grew up with a popsicle stained tongue and was always fantasizing that my life was a movie. I am the youngest of 3 brothers and 2 sisters.

Was I the cutest child ever? I’ll let you decide. ;)

As long as I can remember,

creativity has brought SO MUCH joy to my life. Growing up I was into singing, theatre, dance, and most types of art. I wasn’t good at most of it, but I enjoyed it, hahaha.

Any opportunity I had to create, explore or perform (aka get attention), I took it!

As a teenager I always knew I wanted to be a creative entrepreneur, but I didn’t know what that even meant, or what that life would look like. I remember sitting in class in high school sketching logo ideas with my name. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I had so many ideas. I’m so glad that I wasn’t attached to one specific career path, I stayed curious and was always ready to push myself out of my comfort zone to try something new.

And I met this cute boy from Switzerland 😍 

I met Colvin when I was 15 years old. At the time I was awkward and nervous around boys, but Colvin was friendly and easy to talk to. We were both dating other people at the time, so it was easy and comfortable to get to know each other as friends. We made each other laugh every time we were together. I used to ask him for dating advice whenever I needed a boys perspective.

Two years later, during the summer of 2009, he told me he had feelings for me. I was SHOCKED. I did not see that coming. I spent hours on the phone with my girl friends about this…

A few days later we had our first kiss. And that was it. Game over. Life as I knew it had changed. He had officially and successfully made his way out of the friend zone, and I was swept off my feet.

After dating for a year and falling completely in love, Colvin proposed. We were so young (I was 18 at the time) and so excited. We had so many long talks about our hopes and dreams. What we wanted to do with our lives and how we could get there. We talked a lot about Switzerland. Colvin hadn’t live there for 6 years, but he always considered it home.

One day he was showing me photos of his hometown. I could see the homesickness in his eyes. It was that moment that I knew we should go home… even though I had never even been to Switzerland yet.

We decided to visit Colvin’s family that year for Christmas. I was BEYOND excited. I felt to called to Switzerland, I just knew it would be my home too.

When we got there, I immediately fell in love. We both knew that it was now or never. We made the decision to take the leap, and move our lives to Switzerland.

So Colvin stayed in Switzerland to start getting us on our feet, and I flew back to Utah to say goodbye to everything I had ever known completely by myself. I was only in Utah for a few weeks, but it was such a difficult time for me. Naturally people questioned if we were making the right decision. It was all happening so fast and people wondered if we had thought things through. I didn’t know much at the time, but I knew that I wanted to marry Colvin, and Switzerland is where we are meant to start our lives together.

I followed my gut.

Once I landed back in Zürich, we had 3 months to get married before my temporary visa ran out. So many people were happy to help us throw together a wedding in such a short amount if time. We felt so loved by so many people we hardly knew. We had our wedding in Bremgarten, Switzerland and even though I didn’t speak a word of german at the time, our wedding was magical. We felt so loved and supported, and we knew we had made the right decision.

Moving to Switzerland made me feel like my eyes were open for the first time. Everything around me was so beautiful and special. This is the point in my life that I became utterly obsessed with taking photos. I’m not kidding. I took photos of EVERYTHING. I have thousands of terrible photos with ugly filters on them. I did this for years with the goal to be better each day. I didn’t do it with the plan of starting a photography business. I simply loved it so much that I couldn’t stop.