The Best Value Destination Elopements, Ranked Honestly
At the entry tier the spread is three and a half thousand dollars. At the tier most couples actually choose it is ten.
Value is what your budget carries home, not what it costs. By that measure the destinations I actually work in fall into a clear order, and it stays clear whichever tier you look at.
Every number below is my own and every one of them is on the pricing page, so you can check the ranking rather than take it. I plan and photograph in all of these places, which makes this a ranking of things I sell against each other rather than a comparison of competitors.
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The entry tier, in order
One designed elopement day, everything curated on the ground included, flights and accommodation excluded. US dollars.
Colombia: $7,800 on the Mountains and the Andes circuits, $8,200 on the Caribbean, $8,900 on the Pacific.
Mexico: $8,500 at Sayulita, $8,700 at Cancún and Mexico City, $9,300 at Oaxaca, $9,400 in the Riviera Maya, $10,000 for the Baja Sur circuit.
Costa Rica: $9,700 at Puerto Viejo up to $11,200 at Nosara.
Patagonia: $9,900 at Bariloche up to $10,400 at Torres del Paine.
The spread across that whole list is about three and a half thousand dollars. At the entry tier the ranking is real but it is not dramatic.
The middle tier, where it actually separates
Two full days, photography and film. This is the tier most couples actually choose, and the picture changes completely.
Colombia: $13,500 to $15,500.
Mexico: $15,000 to $17,500.
Costa Rica: $20,000 to $23,500.
Patagonia: $20,500 to $21,800.
Now the spread is ten thousand dollars. Colombia's Signature costs about what Costa Rica's entry tier plus a few thousand costs, and roughly sixty per cent of what Costa Rica's Signature costs for the same two days.
That is the number that should drive the decision, because it is the tier almost everyone lands on once they understand that the second day is where the film and the range come from.
Why Colombia takes the top spot
Three reasons, and none of them is that Colombia is a compromise.
Ground costs are low and the quality is not. The same standard of lodging, transport, florals and food costs meaningfully less than in Costa Rica or Mexico, and none of that is visible in a photograph as a downgrade.
The internal geography is short. Four circuits, each self-contained by road or one short flight, so more of your money goes into the day and less into crossing the country.
And the range is the widest of anywhere I work: a walled colonial city, a city of eternal spring, a granite monolith over a green labyrinth, the tallest palms on earth, high páramo, and a Pacific coast with no road to it.
The honourable cases for the other three
Ranking first on value does not mean winning everything, and each of the others beats Colombia at something specific.
Mexico wins on access and on cenotes. Flights are cheaper and more direct from almost anywhere in North America, and a limestone sinkhole with light coming into it has no Colombian equivalent. Sayulita at $8,500 is also the single cheapest beach day I sell.
Costa Rica wins on wildlife and on ease. Sloths, macaws, turtle arribadas and two oceans in a small country, in a place nobody in your family will question.
Patagonia wins on scale, and nothing else comes close. Granite towers, glacial water and weather that rewrites the day every hour. It is the most expensive thing on the list and if that landscape is what you want, the ranking is irrelevant.
And Canada, which is not on the same scale at all
Canada does not belong in the comparison above and it is worth saying why.
It is priced in Canadian dollars, per city, in two tiers rather than three: Revelstoke C$4,500 and C$6,200, Jasper C$4,500 and C$6,500, Vancouver C$4,800 and C$6,900, Whistler C$6,500 and C$8,500, Vancouver Island and Tofino C$6,900 and C$8,900, Banff C$7,500 and C$9,100.
Those look far cheaper and they are a different product. The Canadian Blueprint is half a day in one place with photography only, and the destination Essential is a full designed day. The destination tiers also absorb ground costs in a country you have flown to.
What is genuinely true: for a North American couple, a Canadian elopement is the cheapest good day on this site, because there is no international flight and no accommodation abroad. Jasper at C$6,500 for two full days with a film is the best value number anywhere in this business.
What is not in any of these numbers
Every figure above is what I charge. None of them is the cost of your trip, and the difference matters when you are comparing countries.
Flights and accommodation are never included, anywhere, in any tier. I do not hold a travel agency licence, so booking travel is not something I am permitted to do. I name the exact hotel and the arrival day and you book it directly.
That means the real ranking shifts with where you are flying from. A couple in Texas will find Mexico cheaper all in than the tier gap suggests. A couple in Toronto will find Colombia and Costa Rica closer than the numbers imply, because the flights are similar.
Ground costs after my invoice also differ. A week of hotels and food in Colombia is meaningfully less than the same week in Costa Rica, which widens the gap rather than narrowing it. That is the one direction the hidden costs move consistently.
The number for everywhere else
Everything above covers the places with a hub or a country guide behind them. Those are the ones I work in repeatedly and can price to the dollar, because I know what every part of the day costs.
Outside Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica and Patagonia, the day is quoted rather than laddered, from $14,000 USD. That is not a penalty. It is what it costs to build a day properly somewhere I have to scout from scratch, source vendors I have not used before, and arrive several days early to learn the light.
If you have somewhere specific in mind that is not on the list, say so. I will price the whole thing in writing before anything is booked, and if the honest answer is that somebody local would serve you better, I will say that too.
What a value ranking cannot measure
One caution, because rankings like this get more weight than they deserve.
Nothing above measures how much you will care about the place in ten years. A day that cost eight thousand in a country you picked for the price is worse value than one that cost twenty in the landscape you had been thinking about since you met. Value is what your budget carries home, and what it carries home is not only photographs.
It also does not measure fit. Some couples are happiest with infrastructure, English on the menus and a plan that cannot go wrong, and for them the Costa Rica premium is buying exactly the right thing.
Use this ranking to break a tie, not to make the decision. If it makes the decision, the decision was not really about the money.
How to actually use this
Badly used, a value ranking talks somebody into a country they did not want. So here is the honest instruction.
Choose the landscape first. If you want a volcano and a sloth, go to Costa Rica and pay the premium, because Colombia does not have those and saving money on the wrong country is not value. If you want granite towers, it is Patagonia and the number is what it is.
Use the ranking when two places are genuinely tied in your head. That is the situation it is built for, and it is more common than you would think: couples who wanted somewhere warm, green and interesting and had not narrowed further than that.
In that case the answer is Colombia, and the six to ten thousand dollars you keep at the Signature tier is a honeymoon rather than a saving.
Everything above is on the pricing page, the country guides are Colombia, Mexico and Costa Rica, and the two closest calls have their own posts: Costa Rica versus Colombia and Medellín versus Mexico City.
Tell me your number and I will tell you honestly what it buys where →