Planning your Colorado Elopement comes with a few simple steps: 1. Choose your vendors & planning team (pick me, pick me!), 2. Choose your location, 3. Finalize your timeline, 4. Add intimate details & finalize logistics. When it comes to planning, you’ll need an experienced colorado elopement photographer by your side, who can tailor-make a timeline that makes sense for your wants and needs, skill and activity level, wish list for your dream day, and contains all the logistics and planning details that will help make your day run smoothly.

First things first: How much time should you book your photographer & videographer for?

Let’s look at a few examples of elopement day timelines and the gallery examples for these timelines. When determining how much time you require for your vendors, you’ll need to consider a few things:

+ The experience you’re looking to have; remember that choosing to elope is NOT settling, and it is still your wedding day. For a more traditional wedding day, 8-10 hours is standard coverage in order to cover all the events in the day, and this is true for an elopement day as well. However, if you don’t plan anything to do on your elopement day outside of just your ceremony, you may need or want less coverage; however, if you are choosing an intimate wedding because you value experiences over the stress of a traditional wedding day, I would encourage you to plan those bucket-list activities you’ve always wanted to do, and incorporate them into your wedding day. Choosing this flexible, less-stressful wedding option means you can do whatever you want on your wedding day, so make it count.

+ The moments that are most important to you; maybe you’ve chosen a 6-hour elopement day because you’d love your ceremony captured, a full hour of couple’s portraits, and then have a planned activity for 2-4 hours afterwards. This is enough time unless you’d like your full wedding story told, from wake up, to getting ready, and everything in between.

+ Your expectations of your vendors; a lot can be completed in a short timeline, but this doesn’t always necessarily translate to your photo + video coverage. If you give your artists more time with you to tell your story, this will include a more well-rounded, documentary style product delivered, with more artistic elements, in-between moments captured, and more of your authenticity captured. If you book for a limited time, you will receive a limited experience. This isn’t a bad thing unless your expectations do not align with what you’ve chosen to book.

Keep in mind that the timelines below are meant to serve as examples of coverages, to give you an idea of how much time you may want from your vendors. Your wedding timeline will be custom-tailored to you after booking; taking into account for travel and local logistics, weather, back up plans, the activities you have planned, and your wants and needs takes experience – make sure that your chosen vendors are up for this task.

Let’s compare timelines.

Two-Hour Elopement Timeline

10am – meet at trailhead, couple should already be ready to meet on location, short hike to ceremony location

10:30am – arrive at ceremony location, vows read

11:00am – after vows, celebrations here (pop champagne, first dance, etc), couple’s portraits

11:30am – head back down to trailhead

12:00pm – photo coverage ends