Arenal · Costa Rica · Elopement Curator
Arenal
10.46°N · 84.70°W
Not a photographer for hire, a curator for the whole day: I design it, plan it, book it, style it, photograph it, film it, and hand it back to you. A complete companion to eloping under an active volcano in Costa Rica.
Arenal is an almost perfect cone standing over a small town, and it spends much of the year inside a cloud. That is the honest version, and it is also why the region is built the way it is: waterfalls in the forest below it, rivers running genuinely hot off its flanks, bridges strung through a canopy that is at its best when the weather is at its worst. You can be legally married here with no residency, no waiting period and no blood test, which means the paperwork stays small and the days stay the part that matters.
Best monthsDec to Apr
The curationEnd to end
Packages from$10,200 USD
Guides on file3
Why an elopement, and why me
The Spiritual Union
An elopement is unlike a wedding. Whereas the wedding is purely focused on aesthetics and performance, elopements are about the spiritual merge: the two of you, a place that means something, and a day built to be lived instead of performed. Done right, it is the most honest set of photographs a couple will ever have. Done by committee, it falls apart in ways you only see later, in the pictures.
Buy a package from a planner
and the day is beautifully arranged, but there is no real “photographer” involved. The pictures come back looking like they were taken on a smartphone. You planned a film and got a receipt.
Bring your own photographer
and you get a good eye with no say in the day. There is a disconnect between what the plan was and what the pictures turn out to be, because the person shooting it did not build it.
Work with me
and you get the best of both worlds. I am a photographer first who plans the entire thing, then brings it home. The person who designs the light is the person standing in it with a camera.
Everyone else plans a day around an activity.
I write a story and play it through one.
It starts with your story, never a location. Before I plan a single thing, I sit with you and listen: how you met, what you are like when no one is watching, the small private details no one else would think to ask for. I write that into a narrative, and then I design the day to play it out. The hike, the boat, the drive up the mountain, that is only the vessel I run your story through, here in Arenal.
This is why the film and the album land the way they do. They are built to carry your story, beat by beat, so that years from now they still move you. Anyone can film two people doing something photogenic in a beautiful place. Turning who you actually are into a film and a set of stills that mean something is the harder thing, and it is the whole of what separates me from everyone else.
What it means to just be present.
Every extra person on an elopement is a seam. A planner to update, a second photographer angling for the same shot, a small crowd of vendors to be aware of. Each one pulls you a little out of the day, and the pictures inherit that split. The reason I hold the whole thing, the plan and the camera, is so that on the day there is no one to manage and no one to perform for.
Present means you are only ever looking at each other. You are not thinking about the schedule, because I am. You forget the camera is there, and that is the exact moment the real frames happen.
01
3 dispatches on fileThe Directory
The Costa Rica groundwork for an Arenal elopement, and the region's own dispatches. Start with the country guide, then write to me about the mountain itself.
02
Four days under the volcanoReal Elopements
Four elopements from the Arenal archive, written the way I remember them: the mornings that cleared, the ones that did not, and what the forest gave us instead. Open any card to read the full story.
03
Three tiers · all-inclusive*, priced in USDThe Packages
One person plans, books, styles, photographs, films, and delivers your Arenal elopement. A curated experience rather than photography hours. Three tiers, each all-inclusive* of what I run on the ground, and each with its own album. Costa Rica sits above Costa Rica and Mexico on ground costs, and the tiers here reflect that honestly rather than quietly thinning what is inside them. What the extra buys is access and timing: the falls before they open, a thermal river after the tours have gone, and more than one sunrise at the mountain.
Three ways to elope in Arenal. Each is the whole experience, designed, planned, booked, styled, and shot by one person, and each comes with its own album. The tier sets how many days the trip runs and how much of it becomes a honeymoon. Everything is listed. There is no hourly meter and no add-on column.
Tier I
Essential
$10,200 USD
1 elopement day · all-inclusive*
The Keepsake Album · 20 pages
- ✓One designed elopement day, start to finish
- ✓Symbolic ceremony, officiant and styling
- ✓One signature location: the forest above La Fortuna or the river below it
- ✓Photography with videography, shot by me alone
- ✓Planning, permissions, a local fixer and transport from your lodge
- ✓A curated, hand-edited gallery
- ✓Available add-on: The Studio Editorial, from $2,500
Tier II · Recommended
Curated Signature
$21,500 USD
2 elopement days · all-inclusive*
The Signature Album · 40 pages, layflat
Everything in Essential, plus:
- ✓A second day, which on a volcano is the day the cloud lifts
- ✓A cinematic film of the day, cut by hand
- ✓Richer florals, hair and makeup
- ✓A local fixer with you throughout
- ✓Thermal river access arranged privately, after the day tours have gone
Experiences woven in
- ·The falls at opening, before the stairs fill
- ·The hanging bridges while the cloud is still in the canopy
- ·A thermal river at dusk, with nobody else in it
Tier III
Curated Adventuremoon
$28,500 USD
4 elopement days · elopement + honeymoon
The Heirloom Album · fine-art, boxed
Everything in Signature, plus:
- ✓The elopement and honeymoon woven into one four-day journey
- ✓Arenal and the cloud forest, with the lake road between them
- ✓Upgraded photography, film and design moments
- ✓Full fixer support across the whole trip
Experiences woven in
- ·The lake crossing and the road up to the cloud forest
- ·A canyon morning: rappelling the waterfalls behind town
- ·A night walk, when the forest belongs to something else entirely
- ·Sunrise on the old lava field with the cone clear, if it gives you one
Signature locations in Arenal
The old lava field, with the cone standing over it · The falls in the forest below town · The turquoise river pools north of La Fortuna · The hanging bridges, in cloud · The lake shore, looking back at the volcano · A thermal river at the treeline, after dark
*All-Inclusive covers everything I curate and run: planning, the symbolic ceremony, styling, activities, the dining on your itinerary, permits, local transport, and photography with videography. It does not include airfare or accommodation, which you book yourself. I am glad to recommend where to stay, but for legal reasons I do not book travel or lodging on your behalf.
Start here
Find your elopement archetype first.
Before the date, the tier, or the locations, take two minutes and find the kind of day you are actually after. It is where every day I design begins, and it tells me exactly where to point you in Arenal, Costa Rica.
Take the Elopement Compass →04
What you will actually doThe Experiences
This is what you are really paying for. A handful of extraordinary days I design, book, and run for you, each one a chapter of the elopement. Turn the album: the photograph on one page, what it is on the other.
The Experiences
Click arrows to turn pages
The ceremony · first light
Vows With the Cone Behind You
Arenal is a near-perfect cone and it spends a great deal of its life inside a cloud. That is the honest starting point. What I do about it is book the ceremony for first light, when the mountain is clear more often than at any other hour, and hold a second window rather than a second location. When it does come out, it fills the whole eastern sky and everybody stops talking.
Included in every tier
Tap sides · swipe to turn pages
The day itself
How your elopement day goes
Once you have your archetype, here is how the day itself actually goes. Nothing here is your job to arrange. It is already arranged.
The slow morning
No rush, no room full of people. You get ready in your own time while I quietly catch the first frames: the note, the shoes, the light coming up.
We begin the story
We do not work a shot list. We live the day I designed around you, and I document it as it unfolds across Arenal, chasing the light I have already mapped.
The vows
Your words, out loud, with no audience but the place and me. This is the quietest and the most important part of the day, and I shoot it from a distance so it stays yours.
Through the activity
The hike, the boat, the dinner, the drive. This is where the story plays out and the best pictures live, because you are doing something real together, not posing beside it.
The last hour of light
I plan the whole day backward from it. When it arrives we are exactly where we need to be, unhurried, with time to spare.
The record
It comes back not as files but as a finished thing: a curated gallery, and on the Signature, a cinematic film and a printed album. The day, kept.
The full guide · free
The Costa Rica Elopement Guide
Before the mountain, the bigger picture. I wrote the complete guide to eloping in Costa Rica: two coasts running on opposite calendars, the cloud forest, the whale coast in the south, and this, the one with a volcano in it. It is the same thinking behind every day I design, in one place.
Read The Costa Rica Elopement Guide →
05
A sample plan, counted backward from your dateThe Timeline
An Arenal elopement has one variable that matters more than all the others, and it is the cloud on the mountain. I handle everything else so that the plan can bend around it. This is the order it runs in, from the first decision to the last dawn window.
The shape of it
We decide the month before anything else, because Arenal in February and Arenal in September are two different products. Then dates, tier, and the lodge that suits how you actually want to wake up.
Lodging and the ground
I book the lodge, the transport from San José, the fixer, and the vendors. The drive in is three to three and a half hours, so arrival day is a travel day and I plan it as one rather than pretending otherwise.
Permissions
Arenal Volcano National Park is run by SINAC, and a commercial shoot inside a protected area needs authorization arranged in advance. Personal photography does not. I sort out which one your day is and file whatever it needs. Nothing here is your job.
The legal side
Costa Rica has no residency requirement, no waiting period and no blood test, and a notary public performs the civil marriage with two adult witnesses. If either of you is divorced or widowed I will flag the timing rules early, because one of them can move a date.
The design
Florals, styling, the table, the film. You see the whole day written down, hour by hour, and we argue about it until it is right.
The weather conversation
I start watching the mountain properly and we agree the order of the windows. This is when having booked days rather than a day starts to pay.
You stop deciding
Dawn windows in the order the sky allows, the forest when it does not. I run all of it. Your job is to be somewhere at a time, in the right shoes.
What you keep
A sneak peek within the week, the full hand-edited gallery after, the film on the Signature tiers, and the album that goes with your tier.
06
The ones couples ask firstQuestions
The questions I hear most often from couples planning an Arenal elopement, answered plainly. If yours is not here, it will be in my first reply when you reach out.
07
Costa Rica dispatchesFrom the Journal
Longer reads for couples who want the whole country in view before choosing a region: the complete Costa Rica guide, how the volcano behaves, and why the green season is not a compromise.
Guide
How to Elope in Arenal
A volcano that is usually inside a cloud, and the one planning decision that fixes it: book dawns rather than a dawn.
14 min read →Guide
The Costa Rica Elopement Guide
The whole country in one place: the two coasts and their opposite seasons, what the legal marriage actually involves, and what each region costs.
8 min read →
Guide
How to Elope in Uvita
A sandbar shaped like a whale's tail that exists for about an hour, humpbacks from both hemispheres, and a ceremony time set by a tide table.
14 min read →Tell me about your day under the volcano.
Share your date and I will come back within 48 hours with availability, an honest estimate, and the windows, the water, and the light I would point you toward.
Est. 1999 · Travelling worldwide · Priced in USD
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