The best place to start planning your elopement isn’t a location.

Before you start scrolling through photographs of Icelandic waterfalls, Oregon coast cliffs, or alpine lakes, I want you to think about something much more important: what would make this day feel unmistakably like yours?

I’m not talking about what looks good in photographs or what you’ve seen other couples do. I’m talking about your favorite foods, your weird little traditions, the way you travel, the things that make you feel alive and the things that make you feel peaceful. Where do you feel most at home? What could you happily spend an entire day doing together?

When you start there, everything else starts making more sense. The location, the timeline, the activities. Instead of building a wedding from a collection of pretty things you found on the internet, you’re building it around the life you already have together.

It feels like your life, turned up a little.

Start with the people, not the wedding

When I start planning an elopement with a couple, I ask a ridiculous number of questions. Some are obviously useful. How much do you hike? Are you comfortable on dirt roads? Do you want sunrise or sunset? Are there heights, heat, cold, steep drop-offs, or other things you’d rather avoid? Those answers help me keep you safe and build a plan that actually makes sense.

But some of my favorite questions sound like they have absolutely nothing to do with wedding planning. One of them is: What is your all-time favorite meal? Please include an appetizer, main course, dessert, and drink.

It sounds slightly excessive. It is also incredibly useful.

Let’s say one of you tells me your ideal drink is a dirty martini. I tuck that information away. Months later, we’re halfway through your elopement day and finish at a location a little earlier than expected. The next place doesn’t need us for another hour, the crowds are starting to roll in, and I get to say, “You know what? I happen to know the best martini place in town. Want to go get a cocktail?”

Suddenly you’re sitting at a bar drinking dirty martinis in your wedding clothes while strangers congratulate you and the staff treats you like royalty. None of that was on the original timeline. I didn’t pull it from a Pinterest board or plan a “spontaneous cocktail hour” six months earlier.

It happened because I knew something about you.

That’s what I mean when I say I want to know you. The more I understand about the two of you, the more possibilities I can put on the table.

Ask yourselves what makes you feel alive

One of my favorite questions to ask couples is what makes them feel alive. And I don’t mean what looks adventurous or what you think you’re supposed to say to an adventure elopement photographer. I want to know what actually makes you excited to be a person in the world.

Maybe it’s spicy white-water kayaking with a cheap beer afterward. Maybe it’s standing on a cliff with salt spray hitting your face, wandering through a new city with no plan, or seeing where a 4×4 dirt road takes you. It could be a quiet morning in the mountains with coffee and nobody else around, or dressing up, eating an incredible meal, and ordering another bottle of wine because you’re nowhere near ready to go home.

One exercise I love is choosing three words for how you want your wedding day to feel:

Wild. Cozy. Curious. Free. Exhilarated. Grounded. Ridiculous. Spontaneous. Luxurious. Private. Social. Nostalgic. Challenged. Relaxed. Surprised. Playful. Adventurous. Peaceful. Energized. Connected. Indulgent. Intimate. Unstructured. Celebratory.

Pick three, then think about what those words could actually look like in real life.

If your words are luxurious, exhilarating, and wild, maybe we end up flying over a glacier in a helicopter and coming back to a beautiful lodge for an incredible dinner. If you’re cozy, relaxed, and indulgent, maybe you wander through a vineyard in the morning and have a private chef cook outside while you drink wine under the stars that night.

And if you’re social, ridiculous, and spontaneous, maybe you have a quiet ceremony somewhere outside the city and then head downtown in your wedding clothes for cocktails and live music. Strangers buy you drinks because they realize you just got married. You meet people you’ll never see again. Nobody knows exactly how the night is going to end.

Those are three completely different wedding days.

Good.

Figure out what you actually want to do

This is one of the biggest reasons I don’t think couples should choose their location first. Start with the experience and ask yourselves what you actually want to do, because the answer can completely change where you should go.

If you want to hike, there are an enormous number of possibilities. If you want to fly over a glacier, suddenly our options narrow. Horseback riding in your wedding clothes means finding an outfitter who’s cool with that. A whale experience means we’re working around wildlife, boat schedules, seasonality, weather, and departure locations.

A morning spent backpacking, making coffee with your Jetboil, and watching the sunrise from a mountain is going to lead us somewhere very different from a slow morning at a beautiful hotel followed by a private chef dinner.

One couple I worked with backpacks together all the time. On their elopement day, we hiked up Mount Ashland in Southern Oregon in their wedding clothes. They pulled out their backpacking chairs, made coffee with their Jetboil, watched the sun rise over Mount Shasta, and said their vows.

Nothing about that morning was something they had to manufacture. It was simply who they already were.

The wedding clothes were new. The experience wasn’t.

Don’t forget the tiny things

Some of the most meaningful pieces of an elopement can look almost insignificant on paper.

One couple I photographed loved getting donuts together on Sunday mornings, so they didn’t have a traditional wedding cake. They got donuts. Another couple had a tradition of taking a ridiculous jumping photograph whenever they traveled and were actually a little embarrassed to ask if we could do one on their elopement day.

My answer was obviously yes. Why wouldn’t we?

Now their wedding photographs are part of a much bigger collection of photographs they’ve been making together for years.

Another couple both drove Jeeps at home and wanted to continue that tradition even though they were flying from Indiana to Oregon for their elopement. They rented a red Jeep, and at the end of the day we drove it onto the beach. They climbed onto the back, ate charcuterie, drank wine, and watched the evening settle around them.

I’ve had couples bring their dogs because there was never any question that the dogs belonged there. One client loved fall so much that she and her partner wore matching pumpkin socks. Another had spent several years teaching English in Thailand before she met her fiancé. During planning, we found a restaurant in Brookings, Oregon with a tuk-tuk outside, so we went there in the middle of the night and took photographs with the tuk-tuk and passing headlights. It created this tiny, unexpected connection between her past and the life she was building now. They eventually honeymooned in Thailand.

That’s the kind of detail I love. Not because it makes the photographs more “personalized,” but because it makes the day more personal.

You probably already have your own version of these things. Maybe you always stop for ice cream, play cards, find a brewery, order way too much sushi, make coffee together every morning, or listen to the same album in the car. Pay attention to the little rituals you’d genuinely be sad to leave out.

Bring them with you. Make them bigger or weirder if you want to. But don’t leave them behind just because they don’t feel wedding-y enough.

Make room for both of you

Designing a day that feels like you doesn’t mean you and your partner have to like all the same things. In fact, some of the best days make room for the differences.

Maybe one of you wants to wake up at 4 a.m., throw on hiking boots, and climb a mountain before breakfast. The other person needs coffee. Slowly. On a porch. With the sound of the birds.

Okay. Maybe the morning belongs to the slow coffee person, and later we go climb the mountain.

Or maybe one of you loves a fancy dinner and the other would happily eat a sandwich beside a river. We can find a way to have both. One of the most thoughtful things you can do for your partner is pay attention to what makes them feel good and make room for it, not because you have to love it too, but because you love them.

Your elopement doesn’t need to be a perfect 50/50 split of every preference. It just needs to feel like both of you were considered.

Wear something that makes you recognize yourself

This applies to your clothes too. I love fashion, and I will absolutely encourage you to wear something bananas if that’s what makes you excited. But I also want you to ask yourself a very simple question when you look in the mirror:

Do I recognize myself?

Maybe you’ve always dreamed about wearing a huge, sparkly wedding dress. Then wear the huge, sparkly wedding dress. But maybe you love looking at those dresses and don’t actually want to wear one. That’s different.

If I were getting married, I probably wouldn’t wear a traditional white wedding dress. I’d probably wear a slim dark green velvet dress with a dramatic back, some interesting ruching, maybe a little train, and emerald earrings. That would feel like me.

A giant white sparkly ballgown might be beautiful. It just wouldn’t feel like I had walked into the room.

You don’t have to avoid trends, be “timeless,” or dress like anyone else. Wear the thing that makes you look in the mirror and think, yep. There I am.

Let yourselves be a little ridiculous

Sometimes people come to me with an idea they’re clearly excited about and immediately ask if it’s weird, too much, or something people actually do.

Maybe. I don’t really care.

If it makes you feel excited, peaceful, connected, ridiculous, wild, luxurious, spontaneous, or alive, I want to hear about it. There might be a permit we need, a weather issue to work around, an outfitter we need to talk to, or a road that requires a particular vehicle. Maybe we need three backup plans and have to move the timeline around.

We can figure that shit out. That’s my job.

One of my favorite examples was an Iceland elopement for a couple who loved off-roading and extreme adventures. We planned an F-road excursion, and then Iceland decided to make things considerably more interesting. A huge storm came through, the rain-swollen rivers made the route significantly more difficult, and when I went out to scout the day before, I couldn’t get through.

I texted them, explained what was happening, gave them the information they needed to make an informed decision, and started building backup plans.

Their answer was basically: No. We’re freaking going for it.

So we reassessed the next morning and went. It worked, and we had an absolutely incredible time.

That decision was very them. But we weren’t blindly taking a risk for the sake of having a wild story. There was planning, scouting, communication, backup plans, and a couple who knew exactly what kind of experience they wanted. Once we’d reassessed the conditions and knew we could do it safely, we went for it.

Your wedding doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s

There isn’t a correct amount of adventure or luxury, a correct number of locations, or a correct way to spend the morning.

You can hike twelve miles or take a helicopter. Ride horses or sit in a hammock. Drink champagne or cheap beer. Go to a dive bar or have a private chef cook dinner on the beach. Eat donuts. Bring your dogs. Wear a giant wedding dress or a velvet suit. Spend the entire evening alone, meet a bunch of strangers, or play a board game for an hour.

You can do all of it. Or none of it.

The point isn’t to make your elopement look different. It’s to make it yours.

Start with your life. Then build the day.

If you’re sitting down to start planning your elopement, don’t begin by asking where you should elope. Start somewhere much closer to home.

Ask yourselves what you genuinely love doing together and what helps you feel present. How do you naturally spend time together? What do you always do when you travel? What foods make you ridiculously happy? What kind of environments make you feel most like yourselves?

Think about what you’d love to experience together, what each of you needs to feel comfortable and present, and what you’re willing to get a little uncomfortable for. What have you always wanted to try? What tiny thing would make both of you laugh because it’s so completely, stupidly you?

Then ask yourselves this:

If we could design this day around the people we actually are, instead of around what a wedding is supposed to be, what would we do?

Maybe the answer is a mountaintop or a vineyard. It could be a helicopter, a red Jeep on an Oregon beach, matching pumpkin socks, a Jetboil and two backpacking chairs, donuts, Taylor Swift playing all day, your dogs running through the frame, or a dive bar at midnight. It could also be sitting quietly together while the stars come out.

There are no extra points for making your elopement look like an elopement.

Make it look like your life. Just give yourselves permission to make that life a little bigger for a day.

Because the best photographs aren’t created by standing in a beautiful place. They’re created because you were actually living while you were there.

And when the day is over, the photographs become the artifacts that let you return to it.

Okay, what would yours look like?

If you’ve made it this far, you probably have at least one idea bouncing around in your head now. Maybe it’s something huge. Maybe it’s weirdly specific. Maybe all you know is that you want your wedding day to feel nothing like a traditional wedding.

That’s enough.

Tell me about the two of you, what makes you feel alive, and what you’d do if nobody else got a vote. We’ll figure out where that takes us.

LET’S MAKE IT YOURS →