Quindío · Colombia · Elopement Curator
Salento
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 in Salento and the Cocora Valley.
Salento is Colombia's coffee-country jewel: a painted town in the Eje Cafetero with the Cocora Valley at its shoulder, where the Quindío wax palms, the tallest palms on earth, stand sixty metres over emerald slopes and drifting cloud. Add working coffee fincas, cherry-red Willys jeeps, hummingbird gardens, and cloud-forest light, and you have the most romantic mountain valley I photograph.
I do not just show up to shoot. I design the day around you, book every piece of it, the officiant, the florals, the jeep, the finca, the dinner, then photograph and film it and deliver the record. One person, start to finish. The ceremony is symbolic, the legal marriage stays simple, and the Salento day is only the part that matters.
Best monthsDec to Feb
The curationEnd to end
Packages from$8,100 USD
Guides on file2
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 Salento.
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
2 dispatches on fileThe Directory
The Colombia-wide groundwork for a Salento elopement, while the valley earns its own dispatches. Start with the country guide, then write to me for the Cocora specifics; they are in my head and my first reply.
02
Four days in the coffee axisReal Elopements
Four elopements from the Salento archive, written the way I remember them: the palms, the fincas, what the valley gave us that day. Open any card to read the full story.
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Three tiers · all-inclusive*, priced in USDThe Packages
One person plans, books, styles, photographs, films, and delivers your Salento 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 Salento. 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
$8,100 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 wax palms at dawn or a coffee finca
- ✓Photography with videography, shot by me alone
- ✓Planning, permissions, local fixer and transport
- ✓A curated, hand-edited gallery
- ✓Available add-on: The Studio Editorial, from $2,500
Tier II · Recommended
Curated Signature
$14,000 USD
2 elopement days · all-inclusive*
The Signature Album · 40 pages, layflat
Everything in Essential, plus:
- ✓A second day, so the story has room to breathe
- ✓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 private Willys jeep into Cocora at first light
- ·A working coffee finca tour and tasting
- ·A finca dinner under the Andes
Tier III
Curated Adventuremoon
$20,000 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
- ✓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 full Cocora cloud-forest loop on foot
- ·The hummingbird garden above the valley
- ·A second finca stay deeper in the coffee hills
- ·A Salento plaza evening, games of tejo included
Signature locations in Salento
The Cocora Valley wax palms at dawn · A working coffee finca in the hills · The colour of Calle Real and the mirador · The cloud-forest trail above the valley · The hummingbird garden · A finca veranda at dusk
*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 Salento, 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 · Cocora
Dawn Among the Wax Palms
The Quindío wax palm is the tallest palm on earth, sixty metres of impossible slenderness, and the Cocora Valley holds hundreds of them scattered up emerald slopes. At dawn the valley is empty and clear, the palms standing out of the mist like a landscape someone dreamed. We hold the ceremony on the valley floor, two people small under the tallest trees of their lives.
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 Salento, 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 Salento, the bigger picture. I wrote the complete guide to eloping in Colombia: the Caribbean walled city, the eternal spring of Medellín, the high Andean capital, how the symbolic ceremony works while the paperwork stays simple, and what it honestly costs. It is the same thinking behind every day I design, in one place.
Read The Colombia Elopement Guide →
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A sample plan, counted backward from your dateThe Timeline
A Salento elopement has fewer moving parts than couples expect, because the ceremony is symbolic and I handle the ground. This is the order it runs in, from the first decision to the dawn ride into the valley.
Date, location, and curator
The drier windows, December through February and July through August, book first. The palms at dawn, the coffee finca, or both, and me to design and photograph it, are the decisions everything else follows from.
Settle the legal path
Most couples sign the legal paperwork quietly at home and keep the Salento ceremony symbolic. If you want the marriage to be legally Colombian, this is when apostilles and official translations start, because the notarial route runs on document time.
Book your flights and stay
You fly into Pereira or Armenia, each about an hour from town. Airfare and accommodation are the two things you arrange yourself, for legal reasons. I will point you to the right coffee finca or boutique stay, and I build the itinerary around it.
Jeeps, fincas, and first light
I confirm the private Willys, the finca, the officiant, and the dawn timing for the valley, and I read the week's weather pattern. Cocora is clearest at first light, so the whole day is built backward from a very early, very worthwhile alarm.
Dawn in the valley
We ride out before the town wakes, marry under the tallest palms on earth, and end on a finca veranda at dusk. Your only job is to be in it. I bring the valley home with you.
06
The ones couples ask firstQuestions
The questions I hear most often from couples planning a Salento 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
Eloping in Colombia: The Guide
The Caribbean walled city, the eternal spring of Medellín, the Andean capital, and the wild Pacific. One country with more range than most continents, in one guide.
5 min read →
Notes
How Colombia Elopements Actually Changed
Colombia went from overlooked to sought-after, and the lasting shift was toward small, curated, independent elopements. What I watched happen, and why it favours couples who plan like this.
4 min read →Tell me about your day in Salento.
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