Guanacaste · Costa Rica · Elopement Curator
Guanacaste
10.63°N · 85.44°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 driest coast in Costa Rica.
Guanacaste is the dry corner of Costa Rica, and it is the reason most people who get married in this country get married here: the sun goes down into the Pacific in front of you, Liberia airport is half an hour from the sand, and from mid-November to April the sky is close to reliable. It is tropical dry forest rather than rainforest, which means gold in February and startlingly green three weeks after the first rain. The legal marriage needs no residency and no waiting period, so the paperwork stays small and the days stay the part that matters.
Best monthsNov to Apr
The curationEnd to end
Packages from$10,000 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 Guanacaste.
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 a Guanacaste elopement, and the north Pacific's own dispatches. Start with the country guide, then write to me about the coast itself.
02
Four days on the north PacificReal Elopements
Four elopements from the Guanacaste archive, written the way I remember them: the forty minutes of sky, the week the rain came, and the volcano an hour behind the beach. 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 Guanacaste 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. This is the easiest region in Costa Rica to arrive in and the most reliable to plan, so what the upper tiers buy is not certainty, it is a private boat instead of a shared one, the inland half of the region, and a second day so the coast and the dry forest each get their own.
Three ways to elope in Guanacaste. 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
$10,000 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: a headland above the Pacific, or an empty beach at sunset
- ✓Photography with videography, shot by me alone
- ✓Planning, permissions, a local fixer and transport
- ✓A curated, hand-edited gallery
- ✓Available add-on: The Studio Editorial, from $2,500
Tier II · Recommended
Curated Signature
$21,000 USD
2 elopement days · all-inclusive*
The Signature Album · 40 pages, layflat
Everything in Essential, plus:
- ✓A second day, so the coast and the dry forest each get one
- ✓A cinematic film of the day, cut by hand
- ✓Richer florals, hair and makeup
- ✓A local fixer with you throughout
- ✓A private boat rather than a shared one
Experiences woven in
- ·A catamaran out for the sunset, just the two of you
- ·The dry forest and its volcanoes, inland
- ·A beach nobody else can reach on foot
Tier III
Curated Adventuremoon
$27,500 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
- ✓The coast, the dry forest and the volcanoes behind it
- ✓Upgraded photography, film and design moments
- ✓Full fixer support across the whole trip
Experiences woven in
- ·Rincón de la Vieja: mud pots, steam vents and a waterfall
- ·A sailing day down the coast to a beach with no road
- ·Horses out through the dry forest at golden hour
- ·The last sunset from a headland with nobody on it
Signature locations in Guanacaste
A headland above the Pacific at sunset · An empty beach on the north coast · The dry forest inland, in the green season · The shallows where the sand goes pale · A boat offshore, in the last hour of light · The volcano country behind the coast
*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 Guanacaste, 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 · sunset
Vows on the Headland
Guanacaste faces west, which sounds obvious until you realise how much of Costa Rica does not. The sun goes down into the Pacific here, in front of you, and a ceremony timed to the last forty minutes of it gets a sky that needs no help at all. A headland above the water, an arch if you want one, and nothing behind you but the sea.
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 Guanacaste, 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 coast, the bigger picture. I wrote the complete guide to eloping in Costa Rica: two coasts running on opposite calendars, the cloud forest, the volcano country, and this, the dry and reliable one. 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
A Guanacaste elopement is the most straightforward day I run in Costa Rica, and almost all of it is timed backwards from the sun going into the water. This is the order it runs in, from the first decision to the last light.
The shape of it
Dates and tier. Guanacaste is the driest region in Costa Rica, so the season conversation is shorter here than anywhere else: roughly mid-November to April is reliable, January and February most of all.
Lodging and the ground
I book the hotel, the transport, the fixer and the vendors. Liberia is the airport, about half an hour from the Papagayo beaches and an hour or so from the Tamarindo side, which makes this the easiest region in the country to arrive in.
Access and permissions
Beaches in Costa Rica are public, but public access is not the same as permission to run an organised ceremony on one, and anything inside a protected area needs authorization arranged in advance. I sort out which applies to each location we want and file whatever is required.
The legal side
No residency requirement, no waiting period, no blood test. A notary performs the civil marriage with two adult witnesses. If either of you is divorced or widowed, tell me early, because one of the rules can move a date.
The design
Florals, styling, the boat, the table, the film. You see the whole day written out hour by hour.
The sunset clock
Everything here is timed to the sun going into the water, so the final running order is built backwards from the exact sunset time on your date.
You stop deciding
The beach early, shade in the middle, the headland for the last hour. I run all of it.
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 a Guanacaste 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 coast: the complete Costa Rica guide, why this corner behaves differently, and which airport to fly into.
Guide
How to Elope in Guanacaste
The only reliably dry corner of the country, thirty minutes from Liberia, with a wind in the dry months that nobody warns you about.
13 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 Monteverde
The cloud is the location rather than the risk, the two reserves have two different owners, and you will be colder than you packed for.
13 min read →Tell me about your day facing west.
Share your date and I will come back within 48 hours with availability, an honest estimate, and the headland, the hour, and the light I would point you toward.
Est. 1999 · Travelling worldwide · Priced in USD
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