This intimate Idaho mountain elopement was one of my favorite sessions in 2024. This location was the perfect background for this intimate elopement. Sarah and Josh flew all the way out from the Washington DC area and chose this beautiful mountain location to elope. It was located in Idaho, north of Mountain Home, in the Anderson Dam area.

This particular spot was chosen because it was very sentimental to them because they had loved spending time there many years ago. ❤️ Sarah and Josh chose to keep their elopement very small, just including themselves. It was a beautiful, intimate event to witness.

From the weather, flowers, and “surprise” officiant, so many things came together beautifully to make this day happen.

Elopement Preparations

I really wanted to make this intimate Idaho mountain elopement one for the books! It is so important to me to communicate with my couples to help make all their wedding day dreams come true. The months before the elopement, Sarah and I began planning all the details. She ended up choosing the location and told me the two days before where to meet.

While talking the day before the elopement (to confirm the location and timeline), she mentioned she wasn’t planning on having any flowers. So I took matters into my own hands. 😊

Flowers are a big part of any wedding. Flowers add beauty, romance, and completes the whole bridal look. Even though this was an elopement and was going to be very small with only the couple present, I felt like they deserved nice flowers on their wedding day.

So I decided to make their flowers! The DAY before. Yep, crazy. I know.

I binged a TON of YouTubes about making bridal bouquets. It looked simple enough. Or so I thought. I went to Trader Joe‘s (10 min before closing), and bought a variety of flowers. The next day I put together the bouquet and boutonniere. Took me a lot longer than I thought; learned a lot along the way! I have to say, I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out for my first try! When I surprised Sarah with the bouquet, she started crying, she was so happy.

The Intimate Idaho Mountain Elopement

After we met the bride and groom at the mountain location, they changed separately. Then we did a big reveal before the ceremony, also called a “first look”. I love doing first looks because it really is such a special moment between the bride and groom. It’s that moment when both of them get to realize “wow, this is really happening!” and I get to capture all the emotions that come with that.

Surprise officiant

After the first look we were ready to have the wedding ceremony. Only problem was, the hired officiant wasn’t there! I kept taking photos and it became apparent that the hired officiant wasn’t going to make it there on time.

We didn’t want to wait any longer, we didn’t know when/if the officiant would show up at all, so my husband Cameron (who is a registered officiant) ended up marrying them! It was a short and simple ceremony, just what the bride and groom wanted!

Happy ending

The weather that day had a “red flag warning” meaning that there was a high chance of lightning, thunderstorms, and high wind speeds. I’m not going to lie, looking at the weather reports made me a little nervous. We totally lucked out on the weather as the main storm systems missed us (they were more in Boise area). The weather ended up being a little overcast too (every photographer’s dream!).

We went to several spots around the area and watched the sunset together. The couple could not be happier with how their wedding day turned out.

The bride loved all the sneak peeks I sent her a few days later telling me “Oh my gosh, these are AMAZING!!! You truly are a gifted artist. And Cameron is one heck of an officiant!! Thank you for making our wedding day perfect. And those photos – it looks like we got married in Heaven😅 We LOVE these photos, and the experience was once in a lifetime!!!”

Want to see more elopements? Check out this link here Idaho Capitol Winter Elopement.