Mount Rainier Elopement with Family and Friends | Intimate National Park Wedding in Washington
I met Dan at my favorite dive bar. He would find me there on a regular basis, doing what I do, editing photos on my laptop with a beer. We became the kind of friends you become at a dive bar, easy and unhurried, sharing a beer and talking about life and not much else. Good people have a way of finding each other in places like that.
One evening Dan showed up with a particular kind of energy. He was engaged. He was excited. And he wanted to know if I would photograph the wedding. I said yes before he finished the sentence, before I knew a single detail, before he told me they were planning an intimate elopement in one of my favorite places on earth. Mount Rainier National Park.
Dan and Karli gathered their closest family and friends and hiked up to a viewpoint together, which is already the correct way to start a wedding ceremony. There is something about arriving somewhere on foot, a little breathless, surrounded by the people who matter most, that sets the tone for everything that follows. By the time you get there you have already done something together. You are already in it.
The ceremony was simple and sweet and completely them, which is the highest compliment I know how to give. No excess, no performance. Just two people saying what they meant in a place that deserved it.
Afterward the group made their way down to a picnic area and did something I think more couples should consider. They sat down together and shared sandwiches and cake and cracked open some Rainier, the beer that was basically invented for exactly this occasion in exactly this place. There is a version of a wedding reception that costs thousands of dollars and a version that looks like this, and I will let you decide which one feels more like actually celebrating.
Elopement photographed at Mount Rainier National Park, Washington. Intimate elopement and small wedding photography by Leah Flores of Rare Day Photo, based in Portland Oregon and available for elopements across the Pacific Northwest and worldwide.
