Best of 2018 weddings, elopements, engagements and adventure photography

Locations: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Eastern and Western US.

View our PRINT SHOP for some of the landscapes in this post!

2018…

What a year. It was a filled with growth, self improvement, traveling and incredible clients!! I got to travel to some truly amazing places this year, and help some of you create the best elopement & engagement adventures ever. There’s is no better feeling than capturing a couples wedding in the outdoors, especially at a place that holds significance to them (whether it’s them cultivating their first memory there, or their first date location.) I cannot thank you all enough for inviting me to capture such important days in your lives!! Each and every one of you wildly in love souls, inspire me to keep moving forward. To continue to plan epic adventures with you guys and to make sure you are having the best time. You are all so much more than just a client to me, I truly enjoy cultivating life long friendships with you & truly connecting with you along the way!

Overview

This year I photographed 26 Weddings and Elopements & 39 Adventure Sessions & Engagements!

Locations

We traveled to 10 different states & visited 7 National Parks

The beginning

Starting wedding season off with a 2 week trip to the east coast (whole blog story here) for a North Carolina beach elopement. We flew to Atlanta, GA, rented a car and camped a large section of the Blue Ridge Mountains, before heading to the beach for the vow ceremony. It was the perfect way to start the year! When we got back home, it was full wedding mode, with weddings every weekend and elopements during the week!

I was all hustle until the middle of June, when we headed out for our Montana road trip. I have always dreamt of a road trip like this, no stress… just two people on the road with a destination and no plans! I am an extreme planner in my professional life…obviously helping plan weddings & elopements takes a lot of planning! But when it comes to vacations, or traveling somewhere new, I like to set a general goal or two of places to see, then just let the adventure happen! (More Glacier National Park images here.) We spent about 3 days at Glacier before hitting the road for The Grand Tetons National Park & Yellowstone National Park (blog posts coming soon!!) Aside from two amazing Adventure Sessions while we were there, it was a week and a half of straight hiking and camping bliss!!

Welcome to peak wedding + elopement season — aka summer in the Midwest, haha!!

After a little over a month of traveling around locally (Minnesota & Wisconsin) for weddings & elopements we were headed back out to Colorado! We took an early flight into Denver, grabbed breakfast then headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park! We camped and hiked (even accomplishing our first 14er!) for a week in various parts of the park. We did manage to head down to the sand dunes for a day, which was one hell of an experience! The mountains surrounding you, as you climb up these giant dunes… it was pretty wild!

We closed out wedding season in Minnesota late November. Winter is really bitter sweet for me, I LOVE craziness of peak wedding season, but I do like my time at home as well… also it gives me time to catch up on business stuff and BLOGGING! Which is why you see me posting so dang many blogs in my “off season” and not a ton during the summer!

Scroll to the bottom for my 2019 goals!

Some fun behind the scenes of us in action!!

These are just a couple fun behind the scenes of me and my favorite second shooter from our 2018 season! No doubt, my favorite are the ones of him getting into those crazy photographer positions for some unique angles, lol!

Fun Fact

Something I noticed while going through all of these little gems… if you decide to have your engagement photos taken by water, there is a 100% chance I will get in it for a better angle!

2019 Goals

Consistency
Developing an editing style is something I feel us photographers never really finalize. After shooting for so many years, my editing style has changed quite a bit. 2019’s biggest goal is going to be honing in my editing style to continue to be warm, moody & emotive… but I want it to be less trendy & more timeless. A style that compliments the unique locations that I am shooting in, retains that “stylized” look and remains consistent throughout ever single shoot! This is going to be a hard one for me, because as any artist will tell you, we are our own biggest critiques, and are never fully satisfied with anything. So for 2019, I am going to learn to embrace consistency!!

Shoot More of What I Love
This is more of a life long career goal, but it can start in 2019! I really want to photograph more of what I love & truly believe in, which is adventurous elopements, sessions and weddings. There isn’t anything wrong with large traditional weddings, I have been photographing them for 13 years and still love all the ways couples make them unique and fun. But I am really focussing hard on living my best life which includes: traveling, hiking, exploring, camping & really anything outdoors. Sharing these kinds of experiences with my couples is what really sets my soul on fire. There’s nothing I love more than to create meaningful connections with them by hiking or traveling to badass places and photographing their wildly in love selves in that super rad location!!

Blog More
My goal is to show more of my amazing couples weddings, elopements and adventure sessions throughout the year (instead of a bunch at the end of the year.) I am currently setting up a blog posting schedule- (call back to my over planning mind, lol!) That will hopefully keep me accountable to this for future 2019 clients!

Travel More
Last year we went on 3 major trips that really fueled my passion for life in such a way that I am wanting even more for 2019! So far we have an Iceland trip planned which I am STOKED about! We will be heading there with my cousin who lives in Alaska full-time that I only get to see every other year or so. A trip to Arizona for a Adventure photographer workshop with two of my favorite photographers leading the adventure elopement industry right now, that I am freaking excited for as well (no matter how long you have been in your trade, there is always more to learn!) A trip to California with my mom in September (it has always been a dream of hers to go to Hollywood, so I thought a nice mother daughter trip would be perfect!) Hoping to get a few more trips in the books for next year, so if your eloping somewhere awesome, reach out, I love an adventure!!

Outsource More
As of now, I really am a one woman show… a very tired, slightly overworked entrepreneur that wants to get back to living a semi normal life (filled with adventures and photo taking!) So, in 2019 I am going to start outsourcing some of those little time consuming tasks, which will allow me to travel more, shoot more and offer a higher level of customer service! I will obviously still be your photographer, and doing mostly everything still, but automating & outsourcing some of those smaller tasks will streamline the whole business side of things and save me time on the computer!

Curious how this whole
thing works?