Dry Falls Waterfall Elopement || Brianna + Nick

Remember how I said in their engagement session blog post that Brianna brought a full jug of water to their waterfall elopement? This lady really plans ahead! She even drew me a color coordinated diagram denoting where everything for the ceremony would be. When I arrived at the Dry Falls parking lot, she’d just finished arranging her vases of flowers (all DIY save for her bridal bouquet done by Stargazers Designs) and arranging the chairs. She didn’t do this in her gown, of course, so she then had to slip into her wedding dress right there in the parking lot! My kind of simplicity.

Though Brianna and Nick had initially talked about eloping in the truest sense of the world - just the two of them and an officiant - they still wanted to include their family in the celebrations. Brianna’s dad walked her down the most epic “aisle” I’ve seen: the entire walkway from the parking lot, under the falls and to the secluded ceremony spot. This gave me plenty of time to capture not only my typical closeups of father and daughter walking and smiling together, but some incredible wide shots incorporating the scenery as well. Nick’s sister officiated the brief ceremony, which we could hear over the roaring falls because Brianna had even brought a mic.

The trick with photographing in such a busy location (a waterfall in the middle of summer? Overflowing with people!) is to hide the random strangers with your subjects - or ask really nicely for them to “take a hike” for a minute. We did a bit of both.

Aside from the intimacy of having such a small ceremony, my favorite part about photographing elopements is having so much time for couple’s photos! We had an entire hour to play with after we finished up family photos. This was really important to me because I had a few images in my head that I really wanted to create that would take more than my usual time to set up.

The second, a prism photo showing off the natural beauty of this location aside from the falls, meant Brianna and Nick would have to walk all the way up to the top and then we’d have to communicate with hand signals to make sure they ended up in the exact right place. After a few minutes of waving and quite a bit of twirling, we succeeded!

The first, and one of my favorite couple’s photos to date, is the backlit series from directly under the falls. I got wet, the bride and groom got wet, my camera got wet, but it was totally worth it. Initially, we had an umbrella to keep their hair safe from the now pouring rain, but the umbrella was all but forgotten as they kissed, sharing a romantic moment under the waterfall completely to themselves (hooray for telephotos!)

Brianna and Nick were such a fantastic couple to work with - detailed and down-to-earth - and I cannot wait to show off the gorgeous albums that we created to show off their magical day.