Chocó · Colombia · Elopement Curator
Chocó
4.64°N · 75.57°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 on the Colombian Pacific.
Chocó is the Colombian Pacific: jungle running straight into the ocean on a coast with no road to it, reached by light aircraft and then by boat. Dark sand beaches a kilometre and a half long, humpbacks calving a few hundred metres offshore from July to October, rivers running back into rainforest to waterfalls, and one of the wettest inhabited places on earth, which is the reason the light is extraordinary rather than a caveat. The ceremony is symbolic, the legal marriage stays simple, and the Chocó day is only the part that matters.
Best monthsDec to Feb
The curationEnd to end
Packages from$8,900 USD
Guides on file5
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 Chocó.
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
5 dispatches on fileThe Directory
The Colombia-wide groundwork for a Chocó elopement, and the coast's own dispatches. Start with the Pacific guide, then write to me for the coast itself.
02
Four days on the PacificReal Elopements
Four elopements from the Chocó archive, written the way I remember them: the rain, the boats, what the coast gave us that day. 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 Chocó 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. And because Colombia's on-the-ground costs run well below Mexico or Costa Rica, each tier here carries noticeably more: richer florals and styling, the jeep and the finca and the valley all in one itinerary, longer coverage. The same budget simply buys a fuller day in the coffee axis.
Three ways to elope in Chocó. 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
$8,900 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 beach at El Almejal or a Guachalito cove
- ✓Photography with videography, shot by me alone
- ✓Planning, permissions, local fixer and boat transport
- ✓A curated, hand-edited gallery
- ✓Available add-on: The Studio Editorial, from $2,500
Tier II · Recommended
Curated Signature
$15,500 USD
2 elopement days · all-inclusive*
The Signature Album · 40 pages, layflat
Everything in Essential, plus:
- ✓A second day, which on this coast is the day the weather gives you
- ✓A cinematic film of the day, cut by hand
- ✓Richer florals, hair and makeup
- ✓A local fixer with you throughout
- ✓The Studio Editorial session, included (a Colombia exclusive)
Experiences woven in
- ·A morning on the water, whales in season
- ·The boat into Utría and the still inlet
- ·The river by canoe to the falls
Tier III
Curated Adventuremoon
$21,500 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
- ✓Both halves of the coast, Bahía Solano and Nuquí, with the crossing between
- ✓Upgraded photography, film and design moments
- ✓Full fixer support across the whole trip
- ✓The Studio Editorial session, included (a Colombia exclusive)
Experiences woven in
- ·The hot springs at Termales, back in the trees
- ·The low-tide walk to Huina, tide permitting
- ·A night with nothing but rain on thatch and surf
- ·The turtle release at Cuevita, if the season is running
Signature locations in Chocó
El Almejal, a kilometre and a half of dark sand · The still inlet inside Utría · Guachalito, black sand under leaning palms · The falls back in the forest, in any weather · The Joví river by canoe · Termales, hot water at the treeline
*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 Chocó, Colombia.
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 · dark sand
Vows on El Almejal
El Almejal runs about a kilometre and a half north of El Valle, wide and dark, with driftwood the size of vehicles and the forest arriving at the sand with no transition at all. At low water the beach turns to a mirror and doubles everything standing on it. This is the ceremony location that cannot be taken away by weather, which is why it is in every tier.
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 Chocó, 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 Colombia Elopement Guide
Before the coast, the bigger picture. I wrote the complete guide to eloping in Colombia: the Caribbean walled city, the eternal spring of Medellín, the high Andes and the páramo, and this, the wildest of the four circuits. It is the same thinking behind every day I design, in one place.
Read The Colombia Elopement Guide →
05
A sample plan, counted backward from your dateThe Timeline
A Chocó elopement has more moving parts than most, because there is no road and the sea decides several of them. I handle all of it. This is the order it runs in, from the first decision to the dawn ride into the valley.
Date, coast, and curator
Whale season, mid July to October, books first and is also when the small lodges fill. The quieter, marginally drier months are December to April. Bahía Solano for whales and a more dependable flight, Nuquí for seclusion and the rivers, or both if the trip runs long enough.
The lodge, and the buffer days
Some of these places have six rooms and there is no overflow twenty minutes down the road, because there is no road. I name the exact lodge and the arrival day and you book it. Build a spare day at each end: when weather closes the strip there is no road alternative and no later flight.
Health, and the legal path
Chocó is a malaria risk area, so this is the point to see a travel clinic and ask them about prophylaxis and yellow fever. Almost every couple signs at home and keeps the ceremony here symbolic, which is right: the registry is in a city and you will be on a coast with no road to it.
Flights, and the baggage problem
You fly into Medellín, then a light aircraft to Bahía Solano or Nuquí. The aircraft is small and the baggage allowance is tight and enforced, so I confirm the exact limit in writing. In practice the dress travels as hand baggage and very little else does.
Written against the tide
The schedule is built on a tide table and rewritten the night before, because boats launch off the sand through surf and the beaches change twice a day. Ceremony first, on a beach that cannot be cancelled. The water second, if the sea allows it.
06
The ones couples ask firstQuestions
The questions I hear most often from couples planning a Chocó elopement, answered plainly. If yours is not here, it will be in my first reply when you reach out.
07
Colombia dispatchesFrom the Journal
Longer reads for couples who want the whole country in view before choosing the valley: the complete Colombia guide, and how eloping here has changed.
Guide
How to Elope in Chocó
There is no road to this coast, and that single fact produces everything else about it. The rain in numbers, what the advisories actually say, the whales and the rules that protect them, Utría's hours and fee, and the four kinds of couple who should not come.
18 min read →
Field
Bahía Solano
The northern town and the dependable strip. El Almejal, the low-tide crossing to Huina, Cabo Marzo, the waterfall that works in any weather, and what the whale morning is really like.
14 min read →
Field
Nuquí
The southern half, where no road stops being an abstraction and becomes a fact about your Tuesday. Guachalito, the hot springs, the beach walk to Partadó, and the honest warning about coming for one day.
14 min read →Tell me about your day on the Pacific.
Share your date and I will come back within 48 hours with availability, an honest estimate, and the valley, the fincas, and the light I would point you toward.
Est. 1999 · Travelling worldwide · Priced in USD