February has quickly become my favorite time to share our favorite wedding and elopement photos from the…
Kelly and David live in West Virginia. Before this trip, they had never been to Maine before. When they got engaged, they wanted it to be the start of many big adventures together, so they decided to have a fall elopement in Acadia National Park.
If you’ve never been to Maine, you’re missing out. We’re so lucky to live within an hour’s drive of so many magical spots, including MDI and Acadia National Park. It’s one of my favorite photography areas because there are so many stunning locations. I see it with new eyes every time I visit!
Typically, I spend around a year getting to know a couple before photographing their wedding day. However, Casey and Jessica were not my clients. One of the biggest fears of wedding photographers is getting sick with something you can’t work through. So when Covid hit, we all held our breath and hoped we wouldn’t get it. Unfortunately, Joel and I got it this past June, and while we were lucky to get it in a window where we had a little break from photographing weddings, we did have to miss out on attending his older brother’s wedding. We were so bummed!
We met up with Steve and Melissa for their Acadia engagement session in May, where we discussed their upcoming Harborside Hotel wedding. We quickly realized how fun, laidback, and goofy these two are together as we posed them for engagement photos, so we were even more excited for their August wedding day to come around.
Mike and Adrianna met at a Blink-182 concert and had their first official date exactly one year later. They love hiking and spending time outdoors with their dog, Murphy, so it was important to them to spend some time in Acadia National Park on their wedding day. Throughout the planning process, we discussed different ways to make this happen before finally deciding to set aside a few hours before the ceremony for the first look at Otter Cliff. This allowed us to take our time in the park while guests were still preparing for the wedding back at the Harborside Hotel, where we’d be returning for the ceremony and reception.
Part of the fun of working with couples from away who choose to elope in Maine is picking the location. After discussing the many beautiful spots Bar Harbor offers, Katie and Josh settled on a cliffside Acadia elopement. From there, we’d make a few more stops for portraits to fully take advantage of Acadia National Park’s many backdrops.
Ashleigh and Dillon’s Bar Harbor Inn wedding called for an early morning regarding hair and makeup. They had planned a late morning ceremony so their reception would wrap up around 4:00 pm. Then, guests could take a little time to refresh before jumping on trolleys to head to a sunset cruise afterparty that evening. Then, there was an after-after party downtown for those who were down to keep celebrating. They wanted to give their guests the whole Bar Harbor experience, and they certainly delivered.
When it came to picking a venue for Mike and Enrica’s Sweet Pea’s Cafe wedding in Bar Harbor, it was kind of a no-brainer. Enrica’s family owns the farm. She spent a lot of time there growing up. She mentioned to me in the moments before the ceremony that the counter she was sitting at inside the tasting room was where she worked throughout high school. So after meeting Mike, introducing him to Bar Harbor, and getting engaged years later, they knew the Farm was the perfect spot to get married.
Melissa and Steve’s Cadillac Mountain engagement session took place on a tranquil evening in Acadia National Park. We met at Otter Cliff at the start of our session and only saw two or three other people our entire time there. After, we made the trek up the mountain. If you don’t know, reservations for Cadillac Mountain start at the end of May. We were heading there two days before reservations kicked in, so we weren’t sure if that would make it more or less crowded than usual. Well, we were pleasantly surprised. There were only a handful of people up there to watch the sunset. While Acadia is always beautiful and relaxing, it’s so peaceful to be there when it’s quiet.
Olivia and Frankie’s spring Acadia wedding took place on such a beautiful day! We were lucky because, of course, you never really know what you’ll get weather-wise during a Maine spring. We just crossed our fingers that it’d be anything but rainy and cold.
I started the day with Frankie as he got ready at the Harborside Hotel with Liv across the hall. The proximity was incredibly convenient because, when it was time, it only took me a few seconds to switch places and photograph Liv as she put on her final touches and read the card from Frankie.
We caravanned into Acadia National Park for their ceremony at Otter Point. In the park, we had such fascinating light. It seemed like every five minutes, the sky would go from entirely grey and overcast to the brightest blue. We ever had some very cool fog move in at one point.
It’s time to share our favorite Maine and New England wedding photos from 2021! This blog post is incredibly overdue, as it is almost July, and we are well into our 2022 wedding season. We were a little nervous heading into our 2021 wedding season because, after all of the 2020 postponements and couples who had held off on planning a wedding, it was going to be one of the biggest wedding seasons we’ve had in the past 12 years. With such a big season, the blog got pushed to the side a bit as I made it a priority to get our clients their photos as quickly as possible. I worried nobody would care to see this post so far into 2022, but since it’s always my favorite post to share every year, I had to do it.
2021 was an exciting one! We started it out with a Millinocket wedding during a blizzard the first weekend of January. We returned to many favorite spots like Fuller Gardens, The Contented Sole, western Maine, Bar Harbor, and Acadia National Park. We finally got to photograph weddings in three of our favorite spots in Maine: Gouldsboro, Aragosta in Deer Isle, and Lubec! And we photographed a wedding on our third of the five Cranberry Isles: Sutton Island. (We photographed a wedding on Great Cranberry Island in 2013 and Isleford in 2020).
