All Day Summer Elopement in the Blue Ridge Mountains

An ALL day elopement? What do you even do all day?!

It’s funny because when it comes to traditional weddings we don’t bat an eye when we spend 15+ hours celebrating a marriage. But when it comes to elopements I often find people wondering what you do beyond exchanging vows and a few photos?

A typical wedding comes with common traditions and pretty straight forward schedules - getting ready, ceremony, portraits, reception. These things are all meant to celebrate your marriage. (Though when celebrating with 150+ guests, a lot of these activities become dictated by taking care of those guests.) With an elopement you are totally free to do whatever you want. Instead of starting in the place of going down the generic to do list full of things you feel like you’re supposed to do, and you start with this simple question, you’ll find there are lots of ways to celebrate your marriage.

What would be your dream day together? No limits, no budget - you have an entire day to do all of your favorite things together or even try something you’ve always wanted. What would you do?

I imagine there are plenty of things that come to mind for each of you, you could easily fill a whole day! This is a good place to start! And I feel if a traditional wedding deserves a full day of festivities and celebration so does your day! Just because we are calling it by a different name, it’s still your wedding celebration and it’s not just the highlights that deserved to be photographed.

When you look back on your life would you only want photos of the big momentous moments? Or photos of all the sweet ordinary moments in between too? I think a wedding day is similar. We hyper focus on the highlights but you deserve to remember the whole day.

Some of my couples favorites photos aren’t from the ceremony or the first dance - but of quiet emotional moments, or unexpected hilarious moments - when your best friend sees you in your dress for the first time, when you sit in the quite of sunrise enjoying a cup of coffee together, when a butterfly lands on your bouquet, the moments you can’t anticipate.

Now, to be clear, an all day elopement doesn’t mean that every single second is scheduled and you’re constantly busy doing something. The best part about elopements I’ve found is the flexibility and the relaxed pace. You can take your time, you can hike as long as you want, you can wait for the rain to move out (which actually happened during this wedding), you can facetime your family (also happened at this wedding!) or you can catch a glimpse of the epic sunset and decide to stay longer and watch it fade.

But trust me, no matter what you plan, the time will fly by too fast on the day you’ll want to live in forever.