What do you do when COVID steals your wedding? Get married anyway – and then head up to Mount Rainier for an epic mountain photo session in your wedding clothes.

Meet Kelly and Greg, who booked me for their 2020 wedding about a year ago. We already had one amazing mountain photo session – their engagement photos up at a snowy Gold Creek Pond in December. I was looking forward to their wedding in March.

That’s right. March 2020. We all know what happened, right?

Wedding dreams shattered, Kelly and Greg had a private ceremony. Under stage regulations at the time, I couldn’t even be there. But finally, after the restrictions on photographers lifted, Kelly and Greg put on their wedding clothes and took a long drive up to one of my favorite places in the world, Tipsoo Lake in Mount Rainier National Park, for a gorgeous, epic mountain wedding photo session at sunset.

These two didn’t even get to cut a cake at their private ceremony, so they decorated and cut a cute little cake right there in the park (in hindsight, we should have brought more napkins).

Then we took off for a walk around this sweet little alpine lake to take advantage of the most gorgeous golden hour light I’ve ever seen. If you go, bring bug spray. Thanks to the kind photographer I met for sharing her bug spray with us!

Now, I’ve loved Tipsoo Lake since I was a kid – it was my dad’s favorite stop on our frequent camping trips to Bumping Lake on the eastern slope of the Cascades. So I know it well, and I knew the alpine wildflower meadows and tall evergreens would be the perfect backdrop for a wedding session.

Ready to book YOUR epic adventure elopement session? Build your custom wedding photography package to get started today!