If you’ve been searching for how to plan an elopement, you’ve probably found dozens of articles about permits, timelines, vendors, and locations. Those things absolutely matter, and we’ll get to them. But after years of helping couples plan adventurous elopements, I’ve become convinced they aren’t what determines whether your wedding becomes one of the greatest days of your life.

In my experience, there are two decisions that have a bigger impact on your elopement than anything else.

The first is choosing one incredible, bucket-list experience and making it the cornerstone of your day.The second is giving yourselves enough time to actually enjoy it.

Those two decisions sound almost too simple, but I’ve watched them transform good wedding days into extraordinary ones.

Most people start their planning process by searching for beautiful places. Then they choose a ceremony location. Then they build a timeline. Only after all of that do they start wondering what they’ll actually do once they get there.

I’ve found that the couples who end up having the most extraordinary wedding days do the exact opposite. They start with this question:

“What’s something we’ve always dreamed of experiencing together?”

Maybe it’s riding horses across black sand beaches. Maybe it’s a private raft tour through a glacier lagoon. Maybe it’s hiking to an alpine lake, whale watching off the Oregon Coast, taking a helicopter into the mountains, or ending the day around a campfire while coyotes howl somewhere in the distance.

When a bucket-list experience becomes the centerpiece of your elopement, I can almost guarantee you’ll end the night lying in bed beside your favorite person, completely in awe of what you just experienced together. That one decision has the power to transform a great wedding day into one you’ll spend the rest of your life talking about.

Then comes the second decision, and it’s just as important.

Give yourselves enough time to actually experience your day.

Not race through it. Not check it off a list. Actually experience it.

Some of the best moments of an elopement are the ones you could never plan. They’re the bakery you wander into because something smells incredible, where a local insists, “If you’re here, you must try the red velvet cake.” They’re the whales that surface just offshore. They’re the driftwood log you sit on for twenty minutes longer because neither of you wanted to this exact moment just yet. 

When you have the freedom to move at the pace the day naturally unfolds, your wedding stops feeling like a timeline and starts feeling like an experience. Those unexpected moments are created by leaving room for them to happen.

After planning elopements for years, I’ve become convinced that these two decisions are what separate a beautiful wedding day from the kind of experience you’ll still be talking about forty years from now.

And here’s the beautiful part. When you build your wedding around an unforgettable experience instead of a beautiful backdrop, the photographs take care of themselves.

Because you don’t plan a photograph, you plan an experience and then document it. The photographs simply become the artifacts that take you back to that moment in time, over and over again. 

The Two Most Important Decisions When Planning an Elopement

1. Build Your Elopement Around a Bucket-List Experience

If I could recommend only one thing to every couple I work with, it would be this.

Choose one experience you’ve always dreamed about and let it become the cornerstone for your wedding day.

Not something you squeeze in between your ceremony and dinner. Not something that feels like an add-on. The reason you’re there.

Maybe that’s taking a private raft through a glacier lagoon before sharing lunch on a secluded island. Maybe it’s riding Icelandic horses across black sand beaches. Maybe it’s whitewater rafting, kayaking, taking a helicopter into the mountains, whale watching, or hiking somewhere you’ve dreamed about since you were a kid.

Whatever it is, don’t treat it as something extra. Treat it as the foundation that everything else is built around.

I know this probably sounds strange coming from a photographer, but I don’t actually plan elopements around photographs.I plan them around experiences.

You can choose a beautiful overlook. You can hope for incredible weather. You can pick the perfect dress or suit. But you can’t schedule genuine awe.

You can’t write “laugh uncontrollably” or “experience total awe” into a timeline.

You can’t manufacture the feeling of watching whales surface around your boat or stepping onto a glacier for the first time. Those moments have to be lived before they can ever be photographed.

That’s why I spend so much of our planning process asking questions that don’t seem to have much to do with weddings.

What adventures have always been on your bucket list? What does your perfect day together actually look like? When do you feel the most like yourselves?

Would you rather spend the afternoon horseback riding through coastal meadows, hiking to a secluded lake, paddling a kayak across glassy water, or building a campfire outside a cozy cabin while your favorite record spins in the background?

My job is to take those dreams and figure out where in the world they can come to life.

The incredible thing is that once we know the experience you’re chasing, choosing the location becomes so much easier. We’re no longer asking, “Where should we elope?”

We’re asking, “Where can this experience happen in the most extraordinary way possible?”

That’s a completely different conversation. And it’s the conversation that leads to wedding days that literally blow my clients minds. Because when the experience is extraordinary, unbelievable photographs naturally follow.

2. Give Yourselves Enough Time to Actually Experience Your Day

The second biggest game changer has nothing to do with where you go. It’s how much time you give yourselves once you get there.

Every elopement timeline I create is built around experiences instead of rushing from location to location. We’re not trying to squeeze eight incredible adventures into one day simply because they’re nearby.

If you can’t decide between horseback riding, kayaking, hiking, whale watching, and camping beneath the stars… maybe that’s not a one-day elopement. Maybe it’s a two-day elopement. Or even three. One of the greatest gifts an elopement gives you is freedom.

You don’t have to rush because dinner starts at six. You don’t have to walk away from a spectacular sunset because a hundred guests are waiting for you somewhere else.

You get to create a day that actually feels good to your soul.

That might mean slowing down to simply enjoy your coffee while the sun rises over the mountains. Taking time for lunch because happy, well-fed humans have a lot more fun than hungry ones. Sitting quietly on a beach because neither of you feels like leaving yet. Following a dirt road simply because you’re curious where it goes.

Planning your elopement with intentional breaks and generous breathing room is the difference between a day that feels rushed and one that feels relaxed. It’s the difference between noticing the little moments and spending the entire day watching the clock.

And those little moments? They’re often the ones you remember most. Some of my favorite memories have never appeared on a timeline.

The Icelandic horses that raced across the field to greet us after our final hike of the day, taking a sunset champagne pop and turning it into one of those wonderfully unplanned, unmistakably Iceland moments we’ll never forget.

The wolves that began to howl while my couple sat beside a campfire. Conversation stopping. Every one of us sitting completely still, captivated by that ethereal sound. 

The herd of elk that casually crossed the road in front of us. The hidden beach we discovered because we weren’t in a hurry to get somewhere else.

The flood that forced us to postpone an elopement by twenty-four hours, only to discover waterfalls twice as powerful the next morning. Standing there, soaked by the mist and overwhelmed by the roar of the water, what at first felt like bad luck, became one of the greatest parts of their wedding day.

The tiny bakery we wandered into because everyone was hungry, where a local insisted, “You have to try the red velvet cake.” To this day, I think we’d all happily fly across the country just to eat another slice.

The Icelandic sheep that wandered onto the trail, causing everyone to freeze. Nobody moving or breathing. I’m quietly switching my camera into silent mode and moving at the speed of a sloth so I could document the encounter without disturbing it.

You can’t schedule moments like these. But you can absolutely create enough space for them to happen.

That’s why I believe planning isn’t separate from photography. By the time I lift my camera for the first photograph of the day, many of the most important images have already been created.

Not because I’ve taken them, because we’ve intentionally built the kind of day where genuine moments have room to unfold.

How I Help Couples Turn Big Dreams Into Extraordinary Elopements

People often assume my job begins when I pick up my camera, but honestly, that’s one of the last things I do. My work begins months earlier. Sometimes more than a year before your elopement. It starts by getting to know you. Really getting to know you.

What makes you feel most alive? What kind of adventure has been sitting on your bucket list for years? What’s your ideal morning like? How do the two of you naturally spend your weekends together? What would make you look at each other at the end of your wedding day and say, “I can’t believe we actually got to do that.”

Once we know the experience you’re dreaming about, I start researching until I find the location that brings it to life. If your dream is racing horses across black sand beaches, we’re going to find the place that does that best.

If your dream is kayaking crystal-clear water, hiking to an alpine lake, or landing on a glacier by helicopter, that’s where the planning begins.

Then we start layering the rest of the day around that experience.

Should your vows happen on top of the glacier? Or would they feel more meaningful beside a quiet alpine lake before your helicopter ever lifts off? Should we plan an hour to wander a coastal town afterward? Do you want to end the night around a campfire? Would slowing down for coffee on the porch of your cabin make the morning feel more like you?

Every decision becomes intentional. Every part of the day supports the experience instead of competing with it. While you’re dreaming about the fun stuff, I’m quietly thinking about everything else.

Weather patterns. Permits. Seasonality. Driving times. Trail conditions. Backup plans. More back up plans. Cabins. Where to get the best martini. Boat departures. Sunrise. Sunset.

The dozens of tiny moving pieces most couples never even realize are happening behind the scenes.

My gold standard for care on an elopement day is that you should be enjoying your experience. You shouldn’t have to know we need to leave in thirty minutes to catch the boat. I need to know that. You shouldn’t have to think about parking logistics, changing weather, permit restrictions, or whether we’re making good time.I should.

When I’ve done my job well, you stop managing your wedding day and you start living it. That’s the experience I want for every couple.

If I can create a day where you’re completely relaxed, completely immersed, and completely present, the photographs become the easiest part of my job. Because incredible experiences naturally create incredible photographs.

Forty Years From Now

When I picture the couples I work with forty or fifty years from now, I don’t imagine them opening their wedding album and saying,

“These pictures turned out beautifully.”

I imagine them interrupting each other with stories.

“Remember the horse that kept trying to eat your flowers?”

“Remember jumping into Crater Lake and how unbelievably exhilarating it was?”

“Remember that tiny bakery with the red velvet cake? I’d fly across the country just to eat another slice.”

“Remember sitting around the campfire when the wolves started howling? I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“Remember when we thought the weather had ruined everything, and it ended up giving us the most incredible waterfalls we’d ever seen?”

Those are the stories I want you to carry home.

Not because they make for great photographs, because they become part of your life together.

The photographs simply make sure you never forget how it all felt.

That’s why I care so deeply about the planning process.

Because every decision we make before your wedding day shapes what becomes possible once you’re standing there.

It shapes the conversations you’ll have. The adventures you’ll share. The moments that catch you completely by surprise. The stories you’ll tell around campfires years from now.

That’s what we’re really creating together.

Not just a wedding day.Not just beautiful photographs. A collection of stories that become part of your relationships. 

Because the best photographs aren’t created simply because you stood somewhere beautiful. They’re created because you experienced something you’ll never forget.

And if, forty years from now, you’re sitting on your back porch together, interrupting each other with stories that begin with,

“Do you remember when…”

Then we’ll both know we got it exactly right.