How to Elope: A Guide to Planning an Elopement Wedding That Feels Like You
Big weddings can quickly become about logistics and other people rather than being focused on your love. We’ve heard countless times from couples that they started looking into eloping originally because they wanted their wedding day to actually be about them! And we couldn’t agree more that eloping is a surefire way to celebrate your love, your way, and feel present through the whole experience!
That is what makes an elopement wedding so special in the first place.
It’s not about randomly stripping your day down until it feels small. It’s all about making space for what matters to you. There’s more intentionality, more personality, deeper emotion, sharper focus and presence. Eloping is holding space for you as a couple to actually experience and remember your wedding day and make memories together rather than racing through it or catering to other people!
As a Colorado elopement photo & video team, we believe your wedding should feel like an extension of your life, not a performance. In our experience, the best elopement wedding is one that feels grounded in who you are as a couple. Maybe that looks like hiking to a viewpoint at sunrise for extremely private vows. Maybe it looks like renting a cozy cabin, making coffee together, having a first dance in the woods, and ending the day with pizza and champagne under the stars. Maybe it’s a little adventurous. Maybe it’s incredibly simple… Either way, the goal is the same: your wedding day should reflect who you are!
This guide will walk you through how to plan an elopement wedding, specifically in Colorado. Everything from choosing the right location and season to building a timeline that feels stress-free!
Again, we focus on Colorado because that’s where we know best and love dearly, but feel free to glean any helpful information from this guide for your elopement location of choice :-)
Why Colorado is *chef’s kiss* for your elopement wedding
Colorado is one of the best places in the country for an elopement wedding because it gives couples something extremely cool: autonomy!
The state offers such a wide variety of landscapes and backdrops that can also accommodate a ton of choices for any activities you may want to include on your elopement day (see what we mean here!). You can exchange vows with dramatic mountain views, in a quiet meadow, beside an alpine lake, beneath sandstone cliffs, or near a tucked-away forest trail that feels like your own secret corner of the world.
There is also a spirit to Colorado that fits elopements so well. People come here for meaningful experiences. They come here to hike, ski, camp, climb, explore, slow down, and remember what it feels like to be outside. That same energy makes it easier to create a wedding day that feels less performative and more alive! Fill your day with the good stuff, y’all!
Another reason Colorado works so well is flexibility. You can keep things incredibly intimate with just the two of you, since witnesses in the state are optional (or can be your dog!) or you’re able to bring along a handful of your favorite people. You can make the day as adventurous or as relaxed as you want. There is room for both, it’s totally up to you.
And that autonomy matters! A lot of couples think an elopement wedding has to mean standing on a windy mountaintop after a five-mile hike. It can certainly be that (and we love those days!). BUT, it can also mean getting ready slowly in an Airbnb over coffee, sharing a first look in the aspens, having a short ceremony with your parents present in your backyard, then heading to dinner at a beautiful restaurant in town. Colorado can, and DOES hold all of it!
What an Elopement Wedding Actually Means
Ok, sure, you don’t want a big wedding, but maybe you’re just dipping your toe into other options here! So, before diving in further, it helps to define what actually is eloping and how that plays into what you want your elopement wedding to feel like.
For some couples, eloping means no guests at all! For others, it means inviting ten to fifteen of the people who matter most to them. For some, it means an all-day experience in the wilderness. For others, it means a few intentional hours followed by a dinner celebration. There is not one right formula (that’s half the funnnn!).
The best question to kick off curating your elopement is this: what kind of day would feel most authentic to your relationship?
Check out what this couple chose to include for their elopement day!
This question tends to get wheels turning. Instead of planning around expectations, you start planning around values. Do you want privacy? Adventure? Ease? Beauty? Time together? Space to be emotional without an audience? A sense of celebration without a giant event attached to it? Maybe yes, AND…?? :-)
A meaningful, true to you elopement wedding usually starts there. It’s a primo spot to jump off into dreaming up your day!
At Castlehouse, we always encourage couples to think beyond the ceremony itself. Your day is not just ten minutes of vows. It is the whole rhythm of the experience. The way you wake up. The way you’re a bit nervous as you get ready. The drive to the perfect ceremony spot. The heartfelt personally written vows. The huge smiles post ceremony. The shared moments as a newly married couple.
That is the real story. It’s your love story!
Start With the Feeling, Not Just the Location
A lot of couples begin planning their elopement wedding by searching for a beautiful place, which honestly makes a ton of sense. And of course, Colorado has no shortage of them! But we think there is a bit better of a place to launch from.
Start with the feeling you want to have on your day.
Do you want the day to feel wild and cinematic? Peaceful and grounded? Cozy and intimate? Playful and relaxed? Elegant but outdoorsy? Answering this question is really helpful once you move on to diving into locations so you can use your chosen feeling as context for the place.
Once you know the emotional texture you’re after, the location choices get much easier!
A dramatic alpine overlook might be perfect for one couple and completely wrong for another. A beautiful location is not automatically the right location (we’ve written blog posts for years on this one, trust us!). The right location for you supports the kind of day you envision.
If you love a good slow morning, some hearty, meaningful conversation, and the idea of soaking in each part of the day, you may want a location that allows for easy access. If movement and adventure your jam and what you picture for your big day, then maybe your elopement wedding includes a hike or a ski lap or a bicycle ride.
There is no prize for choosing the hardest or most impressive option! The goal is not to prove anything (that’s why you’re eloping!!). The goal is to create memories throughout your day and truly experience them all!
Choosing the Best Colorado Location for Your Elopement Wedding
Once you know how you want the day to feel, it’s time to choose a location that fits that feeling. Yay!
As we mentioned before, Colorado offers an incredible range of settings for an elopement wedding, and each part of the state carries its own personality. The mountain towns feel different from the Front Range. The San Juans feel different from Rocky Mountain National Park. Red rock locations feel different from high alpine lakes.
Some couples are drawn to iconic mountain views while others look for a wooded trail more tucked away and private. Both hold their own beauty. What matters is finding the best overlap between scenery, accessibility, privacy, logistics, and how the day will actually unfold.
When you choose a location, think about more than just how it’ll look in the photos and videos. Rather, think more about how it fits your elopement dream day. Consider the following: is it easy to access in your wedding attire? Does it allow guests if you’re bringing family? Does it require permits (do you care about that?)? Will it be crowded at the time of year you want to go? What weather patterns should you expect? Is there a backup option nearby? Etc.
Having help answering these questions, especially if you don’t live in Colorado, is one of the biggest benefits of working with a team who knows the state well! Here at Castlehouse, we don’t just help couples find pretty places, we ask them a ton of questions and offer a few select locations that fit what they’re looking for. The best elopement wedding locations aren’t just scenic, they’re supportive of your day!
Picking the Right Season
Colorado is beautiful year-round, with each season bringing its own vibe to the table and can really change the shape of an elopement wedding in a big way.
Summer brings long days, green alpine landscapes, and access to high-elevation locations that can stay snowed in for most of the year. It’s a stunning time to get married, but also popular! That can mean more crowds, lodging may be harder to find, and more afternoon storms hitting in the mountains.
Fall is one of the most sought-after times for an elopement wedding in Colorado, especially when the aspens turn gold (Sept & Oct!). If you haven’t experienced the aspens in full, you’ll no doubt love it. Mal’s mom cried when she first came out to see them! The colors are unreal, the weather can be super ideal, and the whole state feels totally cinematic. It also books quickly!!
Winter can be quiet, moody, and incredibly romantic. Snowy forests, mountain towns lit up at night, ski-access ceremonies, cozy cabin mornings. A winter elopement wedding has a kind of magic that is hard to replicate. It does require extra planning around road conditions, temperatures, and accessibility, but for the right couple, it is worth it.
Spring is often overlooked, but it can be filled with so much wonder and beauty, especially at lower elevations! However, it does tend to be less predictable with weather giving whiplash. Colorado in the spring can feel like all four seasons in a week sometimes! So, flexibility here can make a difference.
Honestly, we feel that you can’t really go too wrong picking a season for your elopement wedding. Our advice here is choose a season that matches your feeling you’re going for and maybe the experience you’d like to have (i.e. if you want to snowboard, don’t pick July!)!
How to Build a Top Tier Timeline
One of the most fun and whimsical parts of planning an elopement wedding is that you are not forced into the rigid schedule of a traditional wedding day! You don’t need to sprint from one obligation to the next so folks aren’t waiting on you. You get to create a timeline that leaves room to breathe and stick to it as much as you want!
Curating your timeline really is where the whimsy starts to grow for your elopement experience.
You get to make it up! Include whatever you’d like! A thoughtful timeline might include getting ready together or separately, reading letters from loved ones in the morning, a first look, time to travel to your ceremony spot, your vows, a first dance outside, a picnic or private meal, an activity you love to do together, and a peaceful close to the day. We recommend padding the day with lots of extra time to slow down through allllll of these things :-)
A solid elopement wedding timeline doesn’t just maximize epic views. It protects your energy, gives the day direction without feeling overwhelming, and holds space for meaningful moments to happen organically.
This is also where couples often realize they want more time than they first expected. What sounds like a two-hour event often turns into something fuller and more memorable when you allow the day to unfold naturally.
The ceremony matters, of course- first and foremost! But so does everything surrounding it and lifting it up.
The Legal Side of Eloping
Planning an elopement wedding in Colorado also means thinking through the legal details (oooo sexy!). Fortunately, Colorado is one of the easier states for legal logistics, which is part of why couples love it!
You will need a marriage license , and you’ll want to make sure you understand any location-specific rules, especially if you are getting married in a national park, public space, or other managed land. Some locations require permits for ceremonies or professional photography and videography. Some have guest count limits or restrictions around decor and setup and parking.
This is the part of planning that is not glamorous, but can matter. Nothing kills the mood faster than showing up somewhere beautiful and realizing your plan does not actually work there- oops!
There are also countless locations in Colorado that don’t require permits or any special permission, etc. so before you start to feel overwhelmed, remember that elopements should be stress-free and there are lots of people (like us, hiiii) and resources to help you figure it out and dial it all in easily.
You got this!!
What to Wear for Your Elopement Wedding
Here’s the facts: what you wear should support your elopement experience, not fight against it.
That doesn’t mean you can’t wear something elegant or dramatic (and if you choose to, we love you for it!). We really just recommend choosing your outfit that makes sense for your day. Focus on layers, what will make you feel comfortable if you’ll be outside for a while, what shoes you’ll be bopping around in all day, and if your outfit allows movement.
The best style choices for an elopement wedding are the ones that help you feel beautiful and fully present at the same time. A dress that moves well in the wind, a suit that looks sharp but still lets you breathe, a jacket that works with the look instead of clashing with it, shoes that you can actually stand in on a trail! Y’all picking up what we’re putting down?
Colorado weather can change so fast, even in warmer months! A calm bluebird morning can turn into wind or rain by afternoon. Planning for that does not make the day less romantic. It makes it smoother and less stressful (pssstt- if you want a full rundown of picking an elopement wedding dress, check out our blog on it here!).
We can’t wait to see what you wear, we know it’ll be great!
Bringing Guests Without Losing the Experience
Some couples want a small number of guests at their elopement wedding, and that can be a beautiful middle ground of doing what you want while inviting a few loved ones to be a part of the experience. You still get the intimacy of an elopement with the presence of the people who matter most to you and your partner.
The key is being thoughtful about guest count, access, and expectations.
If your location requires a steep hike or rough terrain, it may not be realistic for grandparents or young kids. If you want the ceremony to feel private and calm, a large group can shift the energy. If you do bring guests, it helps to consider whether the whole day includes them or whether some parts stay just for the two of you.
There is no wrong answer here. Some couples want to share everything on their day. Others want family at the ceremony but private experiences later. Both can work beautifully.
As elopement videographers and photographers who deliver everything back to you within a week of your elopement, we often have couples who are hosting a celebration after their elopement where they will show a video of their day. It’s a great way to include everyone on the experience without them actually attending the day.
All that to say, a well-designed elopement wedding can hold intimacy and community at the same time. It just needs intention and thought on how you’d like to proceed.
Add Little Meaningful Details to the Day
This secretly is one of our favorite parts of planning!
The most memorable elopement wedding days usually include something beyond the ceremony that feels rooted in the couple’s real life and love. Not because it photographs well but because it means something!
Maybe you have personalized snowboards, or surprise one another with a custom wedding ring band, or build in time to run together. Maybe it’s your dog joining you or a picnic with your favorite tea- whatever it is, the small details can really become a focal point and a big memory later on!
These small details are often what make the day feel truly yours. They slow things down and center the day around your love story in a super unique way. We love seeing what couples come up with for their elopement day!
Why Photo and Video Matter for an Elopement Wedding
Because elopements can feel more intimate, some couples assume they might only need photos from their day. While we LOVE photos (taking and giving them!), we highly recommend video as well to capture your day. It preserves motion, sound, atmosphere, and the emotional texture of the day in a way nothing else can.
The tremble in your voice during vows, the wind in the trees, the laugh you let out when everything finally feels real! These are the things that bring your elopement wedding experience back to life.
At Castlehouse, we care about making work that feels grounded, artful, and human. We’re not interested in turning your day into a staged production- we aim to document it in a way that helps you remember how it actually felt! Without any added stress, of course:-) If that sounds like your vibe, reach out to us at the bottom of this page to inquire about your Colorado elopement or visit our website!
Lesson Learned: Elope Authentically
At the end of the day, planning an elopement wedding is not really about chasing the most epic location or crafting the most impressive timeline. It’s all about creating a day where you can be fully present and make incredible memories while you get to marry the love of your life!
Everything else will fall into place from there!
Colorado gives couples a beautiful backdrop, yes, undoubtedly so. But the best elopement wedding is never just about the backdrop! It’s about what becomes possible when you strip away the noise and stress of a traditional wedding and craft a day around what matters most.
That is what we care about at Castlehouse.
We are here for couples who value experience over performance. Couples who want a wedding day that feels authentic to them, just elevated and held with intention. Couples who care about how the day felt as much (if not more!) as how it looked. Couples who want to slow down, be present, and start their lives together in the great outdoors.
If that sounds like you, Colorado is a pretty incredible place to begin.
And an elopement wedding might be the most authentically you way to start your marriage.
If you’re a visual learner (like us!), check this out next :-)