Monteverde · Costa Rica · Elopement Curator
Monteverde
10.30°N · 84.82°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 inside the cloud forest in Costa Rica.
Monteverde is a cloud forest on the continental divide, which means the weather is the location rather than a risk to it: mist in the canopy, moss on everything, bridges strung through the treetops that vanish at the far end. The community was founded in 1951 by Quakers who left Alabama, and the reserve is run by a scientific institute rather than the state, which changes how a day here is arranged. It is colder and higher than anyone expects. The legal marriage needs no residency and no waiting period, so the paperwork stays small and the days stay the part that matters.
Best monthsDec to Apr
The curationEnd to end
Packages from$9,900 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 Monteverde.
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 Monteverde elopement, and the cloud forest's own dispatches. Start with the country guide, then write to me about the mountain itself.
02
Four days in the cloudReal Elopements
Four elopements from the Monteverde archive, written the way I remember them: the mornings inside the cloud, the one morning above it, and the cold nobody packed for. 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 Monteverde 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. Monteverde sits at the lower end of the Costa Rica ladder, not because the day is thinner but because the ground costs up here are genuinely lower than on the coast. What you are buying is access at the right hour: the bridges before they open, a naturalist at dawn, and more than one attempt at the ridge above the cloud.
Three ways to elope in Monteverde. 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
$9,900 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: inside the reserve, or the forest edge above Santa Elena
- ✓Photography with videography, shot by me alone
- ✓Planning, reserve 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
$20,500 USD
2 elopement days · all-inclusive*
The Signature Album · 40 pages, layflat
Everything in Essential, plus:
- ✓A second day, because cloud forest weather changes by the hour
- ✓A cinematic film of the day, cut by hand
- ✓Richer florals, hair and makeup
- ✓A local fixer with you throughout
- ✓Private early access to the bridges, before the reserve opens properly
Experiences woven in
- ·The canopy bridges at first light, in cloud
- ·A night walk, when the forest changes species
- ·The continental divide, with the wind coming over it
Tier III
Curated Adventuremoon
$26,700 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 cloud forest and the volcano, with the lake road between them
- ✓Upgraded photography, film and design moments
- ✓Full fixer support across the whole trip
Experiences woven in
- ·The lake road down to the volcano, taken slowly
- ·A morning with a naturalist, looking for the quetzal
- ·The coffee and cacao farms on the slope below town
- ·A hanging-bridge sunrise with the cloud below you rather than around you
Signature locations in Monteverde
Inside the reserve, among the elephant-ear leaves · The canopy bridges, in cloud · The continental divide, with the wind on it · The forest edge above Santa Elena · The farm terraces on the slope below town · The ridge that stands above the cloud at sunrise
*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 Monteverde, 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 · morning
Vows in the Cloud
This is not a forest with a view. It is a forest you are inside, dripping, green in about forty distinct shades, with the light arriving already diffused by the cloud sitting in the canopy. There is no bad weather here in the ordinary sense, because the weather is the location. Rain simply makes it more itself.
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 Monteverde, 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 forest, the bigger picture. I wrote the complete guide to eloping in Costa Rica: two coasts running on opposite calendars, the volcano in the north, the whale coast in the south, and this, the cold green one in the middle. 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 Monteverde elopement turns on two things nobody thinks about until late: which body actually administers the forest you want to stand in, and how cold you are going to be. I handle the first and warn you properly about the second. This is the order it runs in.
The shape of it
Dates, tier, and an honest conversation about weather. Monteverde is cloud forest: it is misty most of the year and that is the product rather than a fault. The clearest window is roughly December to April.
Lodging and the ground
I book the lodging in Santa Elena or on the slope, the transport, the fixer and the vendors. The road up is slow, so arrival is its own day.
Reserve permissions
This is the one place in Costa Rica where the paperwork is not a SINAC question. The Monteverde reserve is administered by the Tropical Science Center, and the Santa Elena reserve is managed through the local school board and community, so each has its own process and its own people. I deal with the right one for wherever we are standing.
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, raise it now, because one of the rules can move a date.
The design
Florals, styling, warm layers that still photograph well, the table, the film. You see the day written out hour by hour.
The windows
We agree the order of the mornings. If the ridge above the cloud is on your list, it needs more than one attempt and I will have said so from the beginning.
You stop deciding
Bridges before opening, forest through the middle, farms when the light comes out. 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 Monteverde 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, why mist is the product here, and what to actually pack.
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 →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 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 →Tell me about your day in the cloud.
Share your date and I will come back within 48 hours with availability, an honest estimate, and the reserve, the hour, and the light I would point you toward.
Est. 1999 · Travelling worldwide · Priced in USD
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