Morgan + Tyler’s Crested Butte Elopement
Morgan and Tyler first approached me with a specific vision in mind: they’d seen a lot of my photos from Crested Butte elopements, and wanted to elope there during wildflower season—so that’s exactly what they did!
There’s so much to love about Crested Butte, but one of the things that makes it a great place to elope is that you can see the most incredible views without doing much hiking (or any). There are a large number of dirt roads and off-roading trails in the valleys surrounding CB, and some of them can easily be driven in a regular car as long as you have higher than average clearance and a confident driver. (That being said, this season the roads were in worse shape than I’ve seen since 2017, and more than one SUV bumper touched down in certain spots.)
Because Morgan and Tyler chose a date that coincided with the Crested Butte wildflower festival, the couple chose to book a vacation rental in nearby Gunnison instead where they had more options to choose from and at much lower prices than in CB itself. Their home for the trip was in a historic loft on the main street of town, with the kind of tall windows that every photographer is ecstatic to see when starting the day.
Since we had all day together and were on a relaxed timeline, the couple made time for a game of foosball after their first look, before heading out for the day. As we drove up toward Crested Butte, we could see dark clouds forming in the distance, and were prepared to get quite a bit of rain—not uncommon on a summer afternoon in Colorado. Luckily the worst of it passed before we made it to our first location, and we got the most beautiful moody light and cloud coverage all day long.
After exchanging their vows to the sound of the river (and one insistent little bird who stayed in the background for the whole ceremony), we continued exploring some of my favorite spots together. The wind and rain picked up enough to cut our lakeside picnic short, but not before Morgan and Tyler had signed their marriage license and made it official. By the time we were ready for cake and champagne higher up in the mountains, the sun even came back out!
While we’d planned on building a campfire and staying out late to see the stars, every single campsite was already occupied, and we know better than to build a fire outside of an established fire ring, so we headed back down to Crested Butte, and finished the evening by lantern light during blue hour.
The whole day was everything I love about getting to spend a whole day with my couples: taking our time with every part of the day, changing plans as needed to avoid bad weather, and enjoying every little bit of sunshine to the fullest!
