Luxury Destination Wedding Photographer | Where I’ve Actually Shot

Why Destination Matters

There is no shortage of lists on the internet telling you the best places in the world to get married. Santorini. Tuscany. Bali. They’re beautiful places, I’m sure. I haven’t shot there.

What I can tell you about are the places I’ve actually stood with a camera — where I know what the light does at 7pm, what it feels like when the wind comes in off the water, and what it means to watch a couple get married somewhere that required everyone they love to cross an ocean to be there. Those are the weddings I remember most clearly. Those are the photographs that still stop me.

This is where I’ve been.

Iceland Elopement Photographer | Skógafoss, Vík, and a Glacier in a Wedding Dress

I’ve photographed weddings on Caribbean beaches, in French châteaux, in New York City at every hour of the day and night. Iceland broke all of it. Nothing prepared me for what October light does on a glacier, or what it feels like to watch someone climb one in a wedding dress.

We started at Skógafoss, one of Iceland’s most iconic waterfalls, and the scale makes people look small in the best possible way — small and alive and completely present. The weather was doing what October in Iceland does: everything. Cold and clear one moment, shifting light the next, clouds moving fast across the sky.

The ceremony was at the cemetery beside the black church on the hill in Vík — Víkurkirkja, one of the southernmost villages in Iceland. Stark white with a red roof, sitting on a basalt hill above the town with the North Atlantic stretching out behind it. The cemetery wraps around it, quiet and old and completely wild in the wind. Two people, one witness, an officiant, and that view.

After the ceremony we drove to Reynisfjara, the black sand beach just outside Vík. The basalt columns, the black sand, the waves coming in hard off the North Atlantic. A wedding dress against black sand and grey ocean is one of the more striking visual combinations I’ve encountered in twenty-five years of doing this.

Then we drove to meet the guides from Melrakki for a private glacier tour, and the bride climbed a glacier in her wedding dress. The blue of glacial ice is a color that doesn’t exist anywhere else — deeper and stranger than water or sky, and it photographs like it’s generating its own light. Against a white dress, on a clear October afternoon, with Iceland spreading out in every direction below — I have no frame of reference for it.

The legal paperwork for an Iceland elopement requires advance planning. Lux Weddings, run by Vigdis, handles all Icelandic documentation requirements for international couples and is the resource I’d point anyone toward first.

If you’re planning an Iceland elopement and want a photographer who has actually been there, climbed that glacier, and knows how the light moves on the south coast in October — I’d love to hear about it.

Cap Ferrat, French Riviera Wedding Photographer

The light in the South of France is not the same light as New York. I didn’t fully understand that until I was standing in the gardens of Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild on a June evening and watched it come through the trees — warmer, softer, slower than anything I’m used to. It filtered differently. It landed differently. It made everything it touched look like it had been waiting to be photographed.

Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild sits on the Cap Ferrat peninsula between Nice and Monaco, and it is one of the most extraordinary places I’ve ever worked. The grounds are immaculately maintained, formal French gardens terraced above the sea, with views in almost every direction that don’t seem real until you’re standing in them. I photographed a Jewish ceremony there with a chuppah built directly over a pond near a fountain — two people under a canopy, the Mediterranean behind them, the sun starting its descent at 9:30pm. That late summer sunset light on the Riviera is something I think about regularly.

And then the reception. They had built it. Literally constructed a venue on a beach nearby — chandeliers hung over tables set on sand, a stage that sat half on the beach and half in the sea, the band playing as waves moved underneath them. Guests arrived through a pathway lined with flames. I have photographed a lot of weddings. I have never photographed anything like that night on that beach.

If you are planning a wedding on the French Riviera — Cap Ferrat, Nice, Antibes, Monaco — I will travel there. I know what the light does. I know how extraordinary it is.

St. Thomas Wedding Photographer | US Virgin Islands

The humidity hit me the moment I stepped off the plane. Not uncomfortable-on-a-summer-day humidity. The kind that is a physical presence, that wraps around you and doesn’t let go. By the time I got to the villa at Peterborg — a private beach house at the end of a winding road above the water — I had made my peace with sweating through the entire day.

The venue’s air conditioning went out. Forty-five guests, a full ceremony, a reception, June in the Caribbean — and not a single person cared. That’s the thing about a wedding where everyone has traveled somewhere extraordinary to be together. The logistics stop mattering. The heat stops mattering. What I remember most is how happy everyone was. Genuinely, completely, unselfconsciously happy — the kind of happy that doesn’t require perfect conditions and isn’t diminished by them.

The ceremony was at 3:30pm with the Caribbean behind them, and by the time we got to the reception the light was doing what Caribbean sunset light does — going warm and low and extraordinary over the water. A steel pan performer played during cocktail hour. There was a conch shell from a grandmother. A bride who had practiced a first dance in secret. A groom honoring parents who weren’t there with two empty chairs and flowers.

St. Thomas rewards photographers who can work in heat and humidity without complaining and who know how to find the light when the venue stops cooperating. I know how to do both.

Puerto Rico Wedding Photographer | Dorado Beach

The Ritz-Carlton Dorado Beach is one of those properties that makes you understand immediately why people choose it. The staff were extraordinarily welcoming — not in a formal hotel way, in a genuinely warm way that set the tone for the entire day. The grounds are lush and sprawling, the ocean is right there, and the light on the Caribbean coast in late June has a particular quality — bright and directional during the day, then going golden and soft as the sun drops toward the water.

The wedding was a Pride celebration in every sense — two grooms, families from New York and Puerto Rico and across the country converging on this beautiful property, an officiant who happened to be the first lesbian Chief Justice of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. The ceremony was on the Surf Terrace with the ocean behind them. The energy in that space was calm and completely full of joy at the same time — the particular combination you get when everyone present knows exactly what this day means.

The reception went until 2am. There was a live band, a DJ, and at midnight — drag queens. The room went absolutely electric. The families danced together. Friends who had traveled from everywhere were on that dance floor. I have photographed a lot of receptions and I can tell you that a room full of people who are that happy, that uninhibited, that genuinely celebrating — it photographs itself.

We stayed an extra day afterward and ate at Marmalade twice. That’s how good Puerto Rico was.

If your wedding is in Puerto Rico — Dorado, San Juan, anywhere on the island — I know the light, I know the energy, and I will absolutely come back.

Little Palm Island Wedding Photographer | Florida Keys

You get there by boat. That’s the first thing to know. Little Palm Island sits off the coast of Little Torch Key in the Lower Florida Keys, and there’s no other way onto it — you take a launch from the mainland and then suddenly you’re somewhere else entirely. The mangroves, the palm trees, the water going every shade of blue and green. By the time you step onto the dock you have already left the regular world behind.

The couple rented out the entire island. Every person there — every guest, every vendor, everyone at breakfast and at the bar and watching the sunset — was there for the wedding. That kind of contained, total celebration has a particular energy that’s impossible to manufacture at a regular venue. There were no strangers. There was nowhere else to be. The whole island was the party.

I stayed nearby and took the boat over every day for four days. The light in the Keys in December is extraordinary — low and warm, the sun dropping toward the Gulf by late afternoon and turning everything golden. They strung crystal chandeliers through the palm trees for the reception dinner on the beach. The ceremony was on the front beach over a fire pit, with a canopy of white hydrangeas and roses and a crystal chandelier suspended in the center of it.

And at some point during the evening, a deer walked up onto the beach.

Nobody planned that. The island just offered it — the way places that are still genuinely wild sometimes do. That’s what Little Palm Island is. Beautiful and constructed and also, underneath all of it, completely itself.

If you are planning a wedding at Little Palm Island, or anywhere in the Florida Keys, I know the boat schedule and I know the light and I will absolutely get back on that launch.

Miami Wedding Photographer | Four Seasons Miami

I photographed Gucci Mane’s wedding.

October 17, 2017, at the Four Seasons Miami on Brickell Avenue — an all-white everything wedding that BET broadcast live as the first episode of a ten-part reality series. The guest list included Diddy, 2 Chainz, Big Sean, Trina, and Lil Yachty. The cake was ten feet tall, cost $75,000, and was cut with a diamond-encrusted sword. The bride walked down the aisle in a rhinestone gown with a jeweled headpiece. The groom wore a white suit, sparkling loafers, and a diamond bow tie. Every single guest wore white. There was a white carpet instead of a red one.

What I remember about shooting it is how genuinely happy they were. The scale and the diamonds and the cameras everywhere could have made it feel like a production — and it was absolutely a production — but at the center of it were two people who were completely, visibly, overwhelmingly in love. That comes through regardless of how many Rolls-Royces are in the parking lot.

The Four Seasons Miami is a stunning venue — high floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, views of Biscayne Bay and the Miami skyline, the kind of light that comes off the water in South Florida and makes everything look cinematic. Miami light is brighter and harder than anything on the East Coast and requires a completely different approach than shooting in New York. I know how to work with it.

If your wedding is in Miami, I’ve been there at the highest possible level. I know the light, I know the venues, and I know what it takes to photograph a room full of people in all white without missing a single moment.

Helsinki Wedding Photographer | Finland

Everything in Helsinki is clean. That’s the first thing I noticed and the thing I kept coming back to all day. The air, the light, the greenery — all of it had a clarity that doesn’t exist in New York, a quality of being genuinely, thoroughly clean in a way that made every photograph feel effortless. The city’s architecture is stunning — grand and Baltic and completely distinct from anything in Western Europe — and it sits right on the water in a way that gives you light bouncing off the sea at almost every turn.

The ceremony was at Nuuksio National Park, about thirty minutes outside the city center, at a place called Haukkalampi. The forest is ancient and mossy and completely quiet. The light comes through the trees in a way that is soft and green and completely unlike anything I’ve encountered anywhere else — filtered, precise, almost luminous.

We stayed in the park after the ceremony for portraits before heading back into Helsinki for the reception at Restaurant Töölönranta, which sits right next to the Finnish National Opera on the waterfront. The contrast between the wild quiet of the national park and the elegance of that reception space — champagne, the water, the long Nordic evening light — was extraordinary.

Finland in summer means long light. The sun doesn’t behave the way it does at home and you have to adjust completely, but what you get in return is evening photography that lasts and lasts and goes colors you don’t expect.

If your wedding is in Helsinki, or anywhere in Finland, I have been there and I understand the light. It is unlike anywhere else I’ve worked, and I would go back without hesitation.

Los Gatos Wedding Photographer | Nestldown

Nestldown sits in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos, tucked into a redwood forest that makes you immediately understand why people come to Northern California to get married. The trees are vast in a way that reframes everything around them — you stand next to a redwood and your sense of scale shifts completely. The light comes through the canopy in long, directional shafts that are unlike anything on the East Coast. It is one of the most naturally beautiful places I’ve ever worked.

The wedding itself matched the setting. The ceremony involved smudging — the couple smudged every single guest who was present, which meant the whole community was ritually welcomed into the space before anything else happened. Then a pinky tying. Then a free-form ceremony with no script, with community participation woven through it. There was a spiritual gentleness to the whole day that felt entirely intentional — two people who had thought carefully about what they wanted the day to mean and built it from the ground up.

Guests rode a small train into the cocktail hour. The reception was at one long communal table. The bride made the cake herself. The first dance had been in rehearsal for a year and a half. You could tell.

Los Gatos itself is beautiful — warm and green and quiet in a way that feels completely removed from the Bay Area’s pace even though you’re not far from it at all. Nestldown is the kind of venue that makes a photographer slow down and pay attention, because the property itself is offering you something extraordinary at every turn.

If your wedding is in Los Gatos, the Santa Cruz Mountains, or anywhere in Northern California, I know this landscape and I know how the light moves through those trees.

Colorado Wedding Photographer | Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park

I did not expect the altitude to hit me that hard.

We were at Rocky Mountain National Park the day before the wedding for portraits at Sheep Lakes, and the climb was warm at the base and then suddenly cold — snow appearing as we went higher, the landscape shifting from summer to something older and wilder within the space of a few hundred feet. The light up there is extraordinary — thin and clear in a way that doesn’t exist at sea level, with a quality that makes colors look almost too saturated to be real. The mountains just sit there being enormous and completely indifferent to you, which is humbling and also exactly what you want behind a couple on their wedding day.

Della Terra Mountain Chateau in Estes Park is where the wedding itself was — a charming venue, more like a beautiful private weekend home perched in the mountains with views that go forever. Sixty guests, two grooms, family traveling from Indonesia to be there for the first time — some of them meeting the other family for the very first time. There’s a particular weight to a wedding like that. The light at sunset came low across the Rockies and turned everything gold.

Colorado mountain weddings are their own category. The scale of the landscape is humbling, the light is unlike anything on the East Coast, and the venues up in Estes Park and around Rocky Mountain National Park have a warmth and intimacy that grand resort properties don’t. If your wedding is in Colorado — Estes Park, Denver, Aspen, anywhere in the Rockies — I know what it takes to get there and I know what the mountains do to a photograph.

Frequently Asked Questions: Destination Wedding Photography

Do you travel internationally for weddings?

Yes. I’ve photographed weddings in Iceland, France, Finland, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Florida Keys, as well as throughout the US from the Florida Keys to the California coast to the Colorado Rockies. Travel costs are discussed during the booking process.

How far in advance should we book for a destination wedding?

As early as possible — destination dates often require coordinating travel for multiple vendors and guests, and popular dates book well ahead. If you have a destination and a date in mind, reach out as soon as you have both.

Do you bring a second photographer on destination weddings?

Always!

What destinations are you most interested in shooting?

I’ll go anywhere the work is extraordinary. Iceland is at the top of my list — I’d go back tomorrow. The French Riviera, the Caribbean, the Pacific Coast, the mountains. If you have a destination in mind, ask me. The answer is probably yes.

How do you handle the legal requirements for destination weddings?

I’m a photographer, not a wedding planner, but I’ve worked alongside destination coordinators who handle documentation in each location. For every destination I travel to, I research the logistics well in advance so nothing surprises me on the day.

Can we see full galleries from your destination weddings?

Yes — my wedding galleries include destination work from multiple locations. If you want to see work from a specific destination, reach out and I can point you to the most relevant examples.

Do you shoot destination elopements as well as full weddings?

Absolutely. Some of my favorite work has been intimate destination elopements — Iceland being the most recent and most extraordinary. Small doesn’t mean less. It often means more.

If your wedding is somewhere extraordinary — or you want it to be — I’d love to hear about it.