Adventure Wedding on a Colorado Fourteener
Mount Huron, Colorado
Of all the weddings we’ve been part of, this one takes the cake for most adventurous. Since starting our business, I’ve dreamed of shooting a wedding on the summit of a Colorado “Fourteener” (local verbiage for mountains that extend above 14,000 feet in elevation). Colorado Fourteeners can be intense – they generally require an alpine start in the cold before the sun is up, there can be afternoon thunderstorms, they can involve scrambling and technical climbing, and the hikes are always unrelentingly steep. In other words, the perfect spot for an adventurous elopement for some Colorado locals like Monique and Craig.
We met well before dawn in the trailhead for Mount Huron and put on headlamps to begin hiking the 3.5 miles and 4,000 feet up to the summit (not to mention the intensely technical dirt road that led to the trailhead). We started up the trail, Monique in her wedding dress with her bouquet stuffed in the top of her pack, and began the hike in the dark.
When talking to Monique and Craig about their plans, I was surprised they were planning on bringing 20 people up with them, some of whom had never hiked a fourteener, some were older and one was under the age of 10. The amount of stoke present in the group was so palpable. Most of them hiked up with beers wrapped up in puffy jackets in their backpacks for the summit. It was exciting to hike with a group so willing and thrilled to summit a mountain for their friends’ wedding.
We stopped a few times on the way up to get photos of the views and stuff our faces with Clif bars. Craig helped Monique with the more technical scrambles since she was in a dress, and when we finally summited after about 4 hours, beers were cracked open and bags of wine were shared. Monique & Craig had a short ceremony as they shivered in the wind. Their friends cheered as they kissed.
This is the definitely one of the most epic and stoke-filled wedding days we have ever been part of. And when we finally made it back down to the bottom, Monique & Craig’s daughter was waiting in her flower girl dress and hugged them as they officially became a family.
I mean is there really any better metaphor for marriage than achieving a huge mountain summit together?
A big thanks to our assistant Nina Larsen who helped us haul all of our photo gear up the mountain, and took some rad BTS photos of us:
Cedar & Pines is a traveling wedding photographer duo made up of Nate and Megan Kantor, a married couple based in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the West. They believe in honest wedding photography, capturing the small candid moments to the epic landscape views. They travel to photograph intimate weddings and adventure elopements from the mountains of Colorado to destination weddings in California, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Washington, Patagonia and the ends of the earth.
