An alpine lake at sunrise, coffee with ducks, pizza in the mountains, and a wedding pie! Need we say more?! Here’s a look behind the scenes at how we planned and photographed a day that felt authentically them.
There is a strange thing that happens when you take the schedule out of a wedding day. Suddenly, you have time and you can do whatever you want with it.
Time to sit beside a lake and watch the clouds move through the mountains. Time to finish a cup of coffee without checking your watch. Time to take a nap since you didn’t sleep a wink the night before, eat pizza, wander through the woods, and have conversations that are fun and lighthearted.
For Gabbi and Chris, this was more or less the plan for their elopement day.
Pssstttt! For our visual learners, check out this BTS video :-)
They had traveled from St. Louis, Missouri, to get married in the Colorado mountains. The ceremony would take place at sunrise beside an alpine lake, followed by an afternoon exploring Rocky Mountain National Park. Beyond that, we'd left most of the day open for spontaneity.
The couple said let’s prioritize coffee and pizza- some of our favorite dates. So we of course fit this in their special day. Gabbi had arranged a number of thoughtful details, including their date inscription on Chris’ suit jacket. But we hadn't decided exactly how long we'd spend in each place, or whether we'd stumble across an especially beautiful patch of aspens and decide to stop.
Good thing we didn’t decide on anything, because that actually happened!
I'm Roo, and together with my wife Mal, we run Castlehouse, a Colorado elopement photography and filmmaking company. We help couples plan and document wedding days that feel a little more like an adventure and a little less like an event that needs managing.
Gabbi and Chris' elopement was a pretty wonderful example of what that can look like and how to keep the day totally yours with no stress.
Here's how the whole thing came together!
Planning a Wedding Day Without Planning Every Minute
One of the first things we do with couples is figure out what they actually want their wedding day to feel like.
It's a question that can be surprisingly difficult to answer.
Most of us have attended enough weddings to develop a fairly specific understanding of how they're supposed to work. There's a ceremony, followed by photographs, perhaps a cocktail hour, dinner, and a handful of traditions that have been repeated so many times they've become almost inseparable from the idea of getting married.
There's nothing wrong with any of that! We've attended plenty of beautiful traditional weddings (and are known to crush on the dance floor).
But when you're planning an elopement, you get to reconsider almost all of it!
You can have a ceremony before breakfast. You can eat lunch in the mountains. You can spend an hour feeding ducks.
There are very few rules about what the day has to contain, which means you can begin with a much more interesting question: What would make this an especially good day for the two of you?
During our planning calls with Gabbi and Chris, we kept coming back to the idea of wanting things to feel relaxed and SUPER chill. They wanted a sunrise ceremony in the mountains, which gave us one important piece of the schedule. We crafted the day around this piece of info. We also wanted to spend time exploring Rocky Mountain National Park, where we could photograph and film them in a variety of landscapes.
Everything else could fit around those two things (and did beautifully).
This is generally how we like to approach elopement planning. Instead of building a schedule down to the minute, we start with a few meaningful experiences and work out how to connect them all.
There are practical considerations, of course. We have to account for driving distances, daylight, access to locations, and the best times to photograph certain landscapes. Planning a sunrise ceremony means figuring out how early everyone needs to wake up, when to meet, and how to arrive before the sun starts appearing over the mountains.
But once those details are accounted for, we like to leave as much room as possible for the unexpected!
Because the unexpected things are often what make the day memorable :)
3 A.M. Comes Pretty Early
We all woke up somewhere around 3 or 4 in the morning. There is a particular feeling that comes with waking up in the middle of the night for something you're genuinely excited about. Your body isn't especially enthusiastic, but your brain has already moved on to the day ahead.
For us, that usually involves checking camera batteries, making sure everything is packed, and trying to remember whether we've forgotten something important. Sunrise ceremonies have become one of our favorite ways to begin an elopement day. There's a peacefulness to the mountains before the day gets going. The trails are quieter, the landscape changes by the minute, and there's something lovely about getting married before most people have even had breakfast.
We met Gabbi and Chris at the trailhead and made our way to an alpine lake just outside Rocky Mountain National Park. The weather was different from the sort of Colorado morning you might imagine when planning a Colorado wedding. Instead of perfectly clear skies and brilliant sunshine, clouds hung over the mountains. The landscape was a little moody, with soft light and layers of gray moving through the surrounding peaks.
We spend a lot of time in Colorado's mountains, and we're accustomed to the endless blue skies that make this part of the country famous. But I've always been particularly drawn to mountains when the weather is less predictable (I am from Washington after all!). Clouds give a landscape dimension. They hide certain things and reveal others. A mountain that might look somewhat ordinary in direct sunlight suddenly feels enormous when the summit disappears into the sky.
For photography and filmmaking, this sort of light is wonderful. There's a softness to everything, and the mountains take on a different character. It also serves as a useful reminder that a beautiful wedding day doesn't require perfect weather. Sometimes the clouds are part of what makes it beautiful.
Getting Married Beside an Alpine Lake
We arrived at the lake shortly before sunrise. Gabbi and Chris got ready for their ceremony, and we found our positions with the cameras. One of the things we're conscious of when photographing and filming an elopement is how much space to give a couple during the important moments. We want beautiful photographs, of course. We want the film to capture the setting, the emotion, and all the little details that might otherwise be forgotten. But we also don't want someone to spend their wedding ceremony wondering where they're supposed to stand or whether they're facing the camera. There's a balance between documenting something and becoming too involved in it. During a ceremony, we generally try to be observers. We move around when we need to, capture different perspectives, and pay attention to the way the surroundings interact with what's happening. But the experience itself belongs to the couple.
Gabbi and Chris exchanged vows beside the lake, with the mountains behind them. Their vows were the sort that bring you back to what a wedding is really about. There was a line about wanting to grow old together through all the quiet, unremarkable moments that end up meaning everything. I thought about that quite a bit afterward. We spend so much time thinking about weddings as extraordinary days, full of beautiful places and experiences, that it's easy to forget what the ceremony is actually celebrating. It's a commitment to all the ordinary days that follow. The grocery shopping and the morning coffee. The difficult conversations and the funny little things that become part of a shared life. The afternoons when nothing especially interesting happens, but you’re together, and that’s what makes it interesting.
Here we were, standing beside a beautiful alpine lake in Colorado, watching two people promise to spend those ordinary days together. It felt like a pretty good reason to wake up at 3 in the morning!
After the ceremony, they signed their marriage license, we took some photographs, and we spent a little time enjoying the scenery before heading back toward Estes Park. It was still early. We'd already witnessed the most important part of the day, but we had an entire afternoon ahead of us.
First, though, we needed something warm to drink.
Coffee, Hot Chocolate, and an Unexpected Number of Ducks
We drove back into Estes Park and stopped at Coffee on the Rocks.
If you've never been, it's a little coffee shop with a pond and a surprisingly enthusiastic population of ducks.
Which, in my opinion, is already a compelling reason to visit. We ordered drinks, found a place to sit, and spent the next hour doing very little that would normally appear on a wedding schedule.
Gabbi and Chris fed the ducks. Mal and I joined them by the pond and we chatted for a bit while sipping our drinks. I got a hot chocolate, which is generally my preferred coffee-shop order :)
At some point, I realized how much I was enjoying this part of the day. Not because we were doing anything especially remarkable. Quite the opposite.
We were just hanging out! And I think that might be one of my favorite things about elopements.
With a traditional wedding schedule, there's often a feeling that you need to keep moving. Finish getting ready, get to the ceremony, make it through the family photographs, head to the reception. There are people waiting and places to be, and even when everything is going perfectly, the day can move surprisingly quickly.
Here, nobody was waiting on us.
We didn't have to rush through our drinks to reach the next location. We didn't have to cut a conversation short because we were already ten minutes behind schedule. We could simply enjoy spending time together. As photographers and filmmakers, there's an additional benefit to this approach. The more time we spend with a couple, the more comfortable everyone becomes. The cameras start to feel less significant. Conversations become more natural. People stop thinking quite so much about the fact that they're being photographed. By the time we returned to the mountains later that afternoon, we'd spent enough time together that the experience felt much more like exploring with friends than working through a photography & videography session.
I think that makes a difference in the images :)
The Very Important Midday Nap
Around 10 or 11 in the morning, Gabbi and Chris were feeling that 3AM wakeup for their ceremony.
So we did something that I wish more weddings allowed for…a NAP!
Gabbi and Chris headed off to rest at their Airbnb, and Mal and I found a spot to park our van and chill. We'd meet back up later in the afternoon, refreshed and ready to spend the rest of the day exploring Rocky Mountain National Park! It was a simple decision, but it says quite a bit about how we had planned the day. There was no pressure to fill every available hour. We didn't feel the need to manufacture activities simply because it was a wedding day. If you’re tired, rest! We want folks to feel energized by their day, not exhausted by it.
When we talk about prioritizing the experience of an elopement, this is what we mean. It's easy to think of a wedding day as something that needs to be maximized. You have a limited amount of time, so perhaps you should try to fit in as many incredible locations and activities as possible. But an experience doesn't necessarily improve just because you add more to it! Sometimes the best thing you can do is take a break. We woke up a few hours later and got ready for round two. And, naturally, the first order of business was pizza…
An Afternoon in Rocky Mountain National Park
We met back up in Estes Park and stopped at Poppy's Pizza to pick up lunch.
Our plan was to take the pizzas into Rocky Mountain National Park and find somewhere beautiful to eat them.
Which is a pretty reliable strategy when you're in a place where nearly every direction offers an incredible mountain view. We found a picnic table overlooking a meadow, settled in, and ate pizza surrounded by the mountains. There were elk in the area, patches of autumn color in the trees, and a landscape that seemed to change every time we looked up.
For Mal and me, Rocky Mountain National Park is one of those places that somehow remains impressive no matter how many times we visit. We get to spend quite a bit of time here for work and in our personal lives. And yet, every time we drive into the park, there's a moment when we look out the window and remember just how extraordinary it is. The scale of the mountains is difficult to communicate through a photograph.
You can frame the peaks beautifully, find the perfect light, and capture the colors of the trees. But being there, with the wind moving through the grass and elk wandering across the meadow, is an entirely different experience.
That's one of the things we try to remember when we're working. The photographs are important. The film is important. These are the things Gabbi and Chris will be able to look back on for years. But they're not the only reason we're here.
The experience of actually being in the mountains, eating pizza together and watching the afternoon unfold, matters just as much as the content we capture.
Making Photographs Without Making the Day About Photographs
After lunch, we spent time wandering through the meadow and exploring the surrounding area. We made a few more intentional photographs, guiding Gabbi and Chris into positions where the scenery and light worked especially well.
But much of the time, we simply let them walk around and enjoy the park.
This is something we've learned to appreciate in our work. Beautiful imagery doesn't always require an elaborate setup. Sometimes it's a matter of paying attention to what's already happening.
A couple walking through the trees. The way someone's dress moves when they turn around. A patch of light falling across the grass. Two people laughing about something that has nothing to do with the photograph you're trying to take. As a filmmaker, I'm especially interested in the moments between the moments. There's often a temptation to focus on the obvious highlights of a wedding day: the ceremony, the kiss, the dramatic mountain backdrop.
And those things are absolutely worth capturing, but it goes deeper than that. I'm equally interested in the small interactions that happen around them. They're often the moments that reveal something about a couple's relationship.
Mal and I work together throughout the day, photographing and filming from different perspectives. Sometimes we'll guide a couple into a particular scene, then step back and let it unfold. Other times, one of us will notice something interesting happening and simply start documenting it.
It's a fairly intuitive process.
We don't arrive with a checklist of fifty poses that need to be completed before everyone can leave. Instead, we try to create an environment where meaningful things can happen naturally, and then pay attention when they do. We know how to make the scenery look beautiful. The more interesting challenge is making sure the photographs still feel like the people in them.
A Little Aspen Grove and Some Very Good Autumn Colors
At some point during our afternoon exploration, we wandered into a small grove of aspens.
The trees were close together, with slender white trunks and brilliant yellow leaves. Colorado's fall colors can be fleeting. The aspens seem to reach their most spectacular point for a brief window before the leaves begin to disappear.
We happened to catch them looking particularly beautiful.
Gabbi's dress stood out against the yellow leaves, and the grove had a completely different feeling from the open meadow we'd been exploring earlier. Where the meadow felt enormous and expansive, the trees created a smaller, more intimate setting.
We wandered through the grove, capturing photographs as we went.
One of the things I love about days like this is how much variety can exist within such a small geographic area. We'd started the morning beside a cloudy alpine lake, spent lunchtime overlooking a wide meadow, and now found ourselves surrounded by golden trees- each setting had its own vibe.
And because we hadn't overfilled the schedule, we could stop when we found something we liked. We didn't need to rush through the aspens to reach a predetermined photo location, we could just soak it in for a bit. When the light was good, we photographed it. When it felt like time to move on, we moved on.
Pretty simple, really :)
The Wedding Pie
Eventually, we made our way toward the Sprague Lake area.
We found a quiet spot beside a little creek, settled in, and prepared for another important wedding tradition.
Pie.
Not a wedding cake, a wedding pie!
Which I think deserves to become a much more widespread tradition, it was awesome.
Gabbi and Chris had brought a pie to celebrate their marriage, and we spent some time enjoying it beside the water.
It was also around this point that I started thinking about all the small details Gabbi had incorporated into the day and we took some time to capture those for them.
She had worked with her family to decorate her wedding heels with little pearls. She'd arranged her own dried flowers through Etsy, which had involved a few shipping complications before everything eventually arrived. And there was a special engraving with their wedding date incorporated into the suit.
None of these details was enormous on its own, but together, they made the day feel deeply personal. I think there's sometimes a misconception that eloping means abandoning all the traditional or sentimental parts of a wedding, that you simply run off into the mountains, exchange vows, take a few photographs, and call it a day.
And there's certainly nothing wrong with doing exactly that, but what I loved about Gabbi and Chris' elopement was how thoughtfully they had chosen the details that mattered to them and included traditions that felt true to them.
Gabbi didn't need an elaborate reception to wear shoes she'd decorated with her family. They didn't need a ballroom to enjoy a celebratory dessert. Their wedding flowers didn't become any less meaningful because they were carried through the mountains instead of down an aisle.
They had brought the meaningful parts of a wedding with them and left the rest behind. It made me think about how many wedding traditions we participate in simply because they're expected. And how lovely it can be to choose them deliberately instead.
The Best Part of the Day Was That It Wasn't Rushed & Had No Stress
By the time we finished exploring near Sprague Lake, we'd been together for most of the day.
We'd watched the sunrise, celebrated their love through their wedding ceremony, fed ducks, taken naps, eaten pizza, wandered through the mountains, marveled at elk, explored an aspen grove, and eaten pie beside a creek.
It was a surprisingly full day! And honestly, somehow, it never felt particularly busy.
I think that's the distinction we keep coming back to when we plan elopements. A full day doesn't have to be a rushed day, you can have an adventure with lots of little experiences and still leave room to enjoy each of them without any added stress.
The secret, at least for us, is not treating the schedule as something that needs to be obeyed at all costs. We love room to breathe!
We had a general idea of where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. But we allowed the day to change as we experienced it. If we wanted to spend longer drinking coffee, we could. If everyone was exhausted, we could take a nap. If we found a particularly beautiful grove of aspens, we could stop and explore it. We could even decide to meet earlier for pizza. None of these changes disrupted the day and from our perspective as the people responsible for photographing and filming the experience, that freedom is incredibly valuable and makes the best content. It allows us to be responsive to the light, the weather, and the energy of the people we're spending time with. Rather than trying to force a particular collection of photographs to happen, we get to document the day as it actually unfolds.
The result is something that feels less like a staged production and more like a record of a real experience.
Which is the whole point :)
What Goes Into Planning an Elopement Like This?
When people see the finished photographs or film from an elopement, I think it's easy to assume that the day simply happened.
Two people arrived in the mountains, got married, and spent the afternoon exploring beautiful places.
And in a sense, that's exactly what happened, but there's quite a bit of thought that goes into making a day feel that effortless! Beforehand, we work with our couples to understand what matters to them. We talk through different locations, the kind of scenery they'd like to experience, and the activities that would make the day feel personal.
We consider what time of day will offer the best light, how long it takes to move between locations, and how much time we want to leave for simply enjoying ourselves. We also think carefully about the pacing and bake in enough time for the couple to not feel stressed.
A sunrise ceremony followed by an entire day of nonstop activities might sound wonderful when you're making the schedule. It can feel quite different when you've been awake since 3 a.m! For Gabbi and Chris, splitting the day into two parts made a lot of sense. We could enjoy the quiet of the morning, take a proper break, and return to the mountains feeling refreshed. Since we'd discussed the general flow of the day beforehand, we were comfortable making little changes as we went.
That, I think, is one of the most important parts of planning an elopement.
The goal isn't to eliminate every uncertainty. It's to take care of the important logistics so that the smaller decisions can happen naturally. You shouldn't have to spend your wedding day worrying about where you're supposed to be next ~ you should be able to look around, see something interesting, and decide to go explore it!
Making Your Wedding Day Your Own
One of our favorite parts of running Castlehouse is getting to help couples imagine a wedding day that might look a little different from what they've seen before.
Sometimes that means hiking to an alpine lake before sunrise.
Sometimes it means bringing along a pie, taking a midday nap, or finding a beautiful place to eat pizza…maybe even all of these things!
We help with the planning, photography, and filmmaking so our couples can focus on experiencing the day rather than organizing it.
We love finding beautiful places, capturing meaningful moments, and creating films that bring people back to how the day felt.
But more than anything, we want the experience itself to be worth remembering!
Gabbi and Chris reminded us that you don't need an especially complicated plan to have an extraordinary wedding day.
A few meaningful ideas, some beautiful places, and enough room to let the day become its own thing.
And perhaps a little wedding pie.
Thinking about eloping in Colorado or Rocky Mountain National Park?
We're Mal and Roo, the husband-and-wife team behind Castlehouse! We help couples plan, photograph, and film intentional elopements throughout Colorado. Whether you want to hike into the mountains at sunrise or spend a slow afternoon exploring someplace beautiful, we'd love to help you make a day that feels authentic to your love story!
Fill out our contact form below to get started!