The Best Places to Elope in the Thousand Islands
Boldt Castle, the granite islands, the river lookouts, and the quiet forests each give a completely different photograph. Here is what each delivers.
Couples looking for an Ontario elopement skip right past this one.
It is the most underrated destination in the country, and the most distinctive.
The Thousand Islands is water, stone, and pine, dotted with Gilded Age castles, where the line between Ontario and New York runs through the channels. Nothing on a mountain or a coast feels like it.
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Boldt Castle, a six-storey Rhineland castle built on Heart Island as a monument to love, is the iconic structure, and with Singer Castle and the grand estates it gives a backdrop of stone and romance set directly on the water.
Boldt Castle and the islands
Boldt Castle, a six-storey Rhineland castle built on Heart Island as a monument to love, is the iconic structure, and with Singer Castle and the grand estates it gives a backdrop of stone and romance set directly on the water.
The archipelago itself, 1,800 granite islands crowned with windswept pines and clear channels between, is the soul of the place, the river light reflecting off the water in every direction.
The shorelines and the forests
The mainland lookouts, the Thousand Islands National Park sites, Landon Bay, the granite points, give sweeping archipelago views without a boat, the accessible heart of the destination.
And the quiet pine and hardwood forests, mossy granite, and sheltered coves give the intimate counterpoint to the open river, and in autumn they turn brilliant against the blue water.
The right place depends on what the photographs need to hold. I plan that around you, arrange the boat access and any Parks Canada permit, and both shoot and film it. Twelve years and 240+ couples in, the islands give something no mountain or coast can.
Let the Elopement Compass point you to your corner of the islands →
