How to Find Private Spots for your Elopement (Avoid tourists!)
A big question I get a lot is, “How can we find a private spot for our elopement?” After all, it’s not ideal to say your vows and share emotional moments together with a bunch of people talking around you, babies crying, other people trying to take pictures of the landscape and watching you. Most people elope in or near national parks and they can get quite crowded, but after photographing lots of elopements I’ve gotten quite good at finding sweet spots that are completely tourist free wherever I go! So here are my top tips for finding a private, remote, but still beautiful spot for your elopement or small wedding!
WEEKDAYS WEEKDAYS WEEKDAYS
I can’t stress this enough, eloping on weekdays is by far the best time to plan it. Everyone goes hiking and camping on the weekends, and the wilderness is just more crowded than usual. If you elope in a national park on a weekend you’re going to be waiting in traffic, have long wait times at restaurants, and you might not be able to do all the things you want because of the delays. I encourage all the elopements that I help plan and photograph to do it between Monday-Thursday, and those days are usually super chill with no wait times and lots more privacy. I’ve even had popular spots at Zion be almost empty at sunrise on a Tuesday morning, but if we were to do that same sunrise hike on a Saturday it would be packed. Adventure elopements and weddings are 100% better on weekdays and I would try everything you can to plan it around then!
TIME OF DAY
The time of day is super important too. I know it’s sometimes inconvenient to wake up early for sunrise but it just gets more crowded as the day goes on. If you want as much privacy as possible for your vows than sunrise is the way to go. Most of the time we do the ceremony first thing and then we can still get beautiful sunset photos later without the concern of it being awkward during your ceremony. Plus the sunrise is peaceful and super pretty so I recommend it anyway! Generally national parks are pretty crowded at sunset so that’s probably the worst time to go as far as privacy is concerned. Between 10am-5pm are pretty crowded since that’s when most people do their day hikes so before 10am is my recommendation for avoiding crowds.
THE TIME OF YEAR
So this greatly depends on the national park or area you’re interested at eloping in. I am local to Zion National Park and since it’s one of the most popular national parks it’s pretty crowded year round, but it’s much less crowded between December-February. The summer is overwhelmingly crowded and there’s just so much traffic you might end up waiting hours if you go during peak times like the weekend. Eloping in the winter in the desert is the best time to avoid tourists, and the late spring/summer is the worst time. If you’re planning an elopement in a place like Colorado or Montana though, eloping in the winter is just going to be too cold (unless you want a snow elopement) so you’ll have to elope during the peak times of the year which means you’ll have to follow my next few tips in order to ensure you don’t run into too many tourists! Most places are the busiest in the summer so planning a winter or late fall elopement is better for privacy (you might run into weather issues though depending on the place, the desert is pretty mild in the winter so Utah and Arizona are great winter elopement locations.)
HOW TO FIND SICK REMOTE SPOTS
Ok, so now that we’ve gotten the logistical tips out of the way, let’s talk about how to actually find these amazing remote spots on your own.
Google maps and Google earth are your biggest friend!!
So I have an Oculus VR headseat, and it has a feature where you can explore Google Earth, you can even go down dirt roads and explore lots of places that would take a lot of time to drive or hike to! I’ll sit in my living room and scout locations just for fun! It’s pretty cool, but obviously I’m assuming most of you don’t have a VR! No worries, Google earth is easily accessible on your computer and you can explore so much on there. Here’s the process of how I do it:
Let’s say you want to elope at Arches National Park in Moab, but you want to find some really cool spots that are a little out of the way. Obviously inside the national park is going to be crowded at most the main spots, so you’d want to find something that’s still by the park but not an actual part of it. (Unless you’re in a HUGE national park like Canyonlands or Yellowstone, they’re so big that you can find private spots in the park itself easily) I do this with almost every elopement that I shoot because you can always go back and take pictures in the national park after your ceremony.
I found this beautiful canyon right across from Arches NP that’s easy to get to and has lots of beautiful desert walls around it by following these tips!
This next part depends on the type of vehicle you have. I generally recommend renting a 4 wheel drive vehicle with some clearance so that way you can go wherever you want, but if you only have a car and nothing that can go on dirt roads, then skip to the next part.
So assuming you have a 4x4, or even a two wheel drive as long as it has clearance, my next step is finding dirt roads on public land (I’ll talk more about that in a second) and following them to see where they go. There’s a few crucial tips with this!
1. Make sure it’s not gated!! Zoom in really close on the map and make sure it’s not blocked off.
2. If it has street view on Google Earth, then that’s ideal because you can see exactly what it looks like!
3. If not, then look around the road from the satellite view for certain distinct features. I always look for mountains and other landmarks that would make for a pretty background. You can check an elevation map as well to see how many hills or mountains there really are. I don’t like shooting in super flat areas so if it looks flat without any cool landmarks I don’t consider it.
4. The wider the dirt road and more visible it is, generally it will be in better condition. There are some super wide and nicely taken care of dirt roads that even cars could drive on, and you’ll notice them on the map because they will be the widest dirt roads on the map. They’re also usually not very curvy roads.
5. The narrower and more curvy the road it, the harder it’s going to be to drive on usually. If it’s harder to see from satellite view then it’s going to be a more technical road. If you enjoy offroading then it’s not a big problem, but if you want a road that’s easier then keep this in mind.
6. Find a few dirt roads that look promising and put a pin on them.
7. Research that general area on google (if it has a name) and see what other people have to say about that area!
8. If all still looks promising then the last step is to just scout it out the day or two before! This is so you can know if the spot is right for you and so you can see the condition of the road.
*IMPORTANT NOTE* Make sure you send someone the exact location of where you’re going and when you expect to be back for safety reasons.
I’ve found some of the most incredible cliff overlooks, amazing canyons, and crazy unique scenery that no one else will have in their pictures from following this method. The couples I help always have private ceremonies in the coolest freakin spots!! Then usually we’ll go take pictures in the actual national park later. I highly recommend finding your own spots this way.
RESEARCH
I also do a lot of research before I visit an area! Googling, “remote spots in arches national park” and stuff like that is super helpful because then you don’t have to do it all by yourself! There are lots of offroading blogs (especially for Utah) that can show you maps of cool spots that people typically offroad to.
IF YOU DON’T HAVE AN OFFROADING VEHICLE
If you only have a car and don’t want to take it down a dirt road, then the next step here is that you’re probably going to have to hike a little ways to get a good spot or drive a little farther out of the area. For example, about an hour away from Zion there’s this beautiful paved scenic byway road that goes through a patch of Joshua trees and beautiful desert mountains. You could park right off to the side of the road and say your vows anywhere around there. So trying to find paved roads that are really far away or go through remote areas is another thing I do when I know the couple has family with cars or don’t want to go down dirt roads. Look for scenic byways specifically, you could try googling, “scenic drives by moab” or something like that. There might still be some people but it’ll be way less crowded.
Honestly, if you hike any trail that requires people to hike more than 3 miles you’ll probably get some of that to yourself, unless it’s a super popular hike like Angel’s Landing in Zion (that hike is crowded no matter what). I typically don’t do longer hikes as much for elopements because people don’t want to get sweaty and tired right before their pictures, but if you’re into that I think it’s an awesome idea!! Hiking in your wedding dress makes for some of the coolest pictures!
PUBLIC LAND
Make sure the area you choose to elope at is on public land, in order to do that I use an app called FreeRoam that shows which land is private and which land is public. Also make sure you look at the permitting rules for the area which are usually easy to find on the national parks website.
HAVE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER DO THIS ALL FOR YOU
If this all seems overwhelming to you, no worries! I offer full planning and scouting services for my wedding/elopement photography packages and and a lot of other photographers offer that too. I know so many remote spots around Zion it’s crazy, just because I’ve lived here for almost a decade and go offroading all the time, but I’m also very good at finding these cool spots anywhere I go so I’ll usually get there a day or two before and do a bunch of in person scouting! And before that I’ll be sitting on the VR in my living room to make sure I find the best places! If you’re interested in having this process done for you contact me here! Even if you don’t book me as your photographer I’m still willing to help you out if it’s around the areas I already know! (Which is a lot of the western states)
One last thing to note, a lot of eastern and midwest states don’t have a lot of public land so this process is more geared towards the western states, but it’s still possible in other parts of the country!
