Hello there! Today, you’ll be able to witness a wonderful Northern Michigan Elopement at Negwegon State Park with the lovely Robin and her fiancé, Victor. Not only was the weather absolutely perfect for this elopement, but we were able to take advantage of Negwegon’s beach and forest for this session. So, stay tuned to see more about this Northern Michigan Elopement!

Like most of our adventures, it starts at the parking lot. Literally. Victor and Robin pulled up, hopped out of their car, and started getting changed right there. (And don’t worry, they had the appropriate under clothing on in order to remain decent.) They also had their 1 and ½ year old son, Elliot, with them too.

Once they were dressed, we signed the Marriage License right away, to simply get that out of the way, and to make sure it didn’t get lost throughout the ceremony and ensuing photo session. Once we finished with that, we made our way to the beach to have the ceremony itself!

Once at the beach, we had a little minimony. What is a minimony? It is simply a elopement ceremony that takes place with as few people as possible, for a very short amount of time. (Their ceremony was less than 5 minutes in length.) For us, we had myself, my husband Jeff (taking photos while I officiated), Robin, Victor, Elliot, and my friend Carrie as a witness.

Yes, you might have noticed in one of the photographs, that I was hiding in the bushes. I literally do hide away (as best as I can) in order to get some great photos of the First Kiss without my head in the background. Anyhow, after the ceremony was done, Robin and Victor were officially married! Now, it was time for photos.

Of course, being that we had a 1 and ½ year old child with us, it was a little slow to get started on the official portraits, but we were able to capture some really adorable pictures of Elliot nonetheless. (Don’t take that as we don’t like kids. We do! It was just too cute how he tried to walk through the sand, fell down, got up, dusted himself off, just to do it all over again!) Once we got rolling however, none of us could stop.

We totally had a blast with Robin, Victor, and Elliot. And might I add, that Elliot loved being thrown into the air and lifted up by his parents? (We never ask parents to do this with their children.) Elliot was pretty attached to his momma, but would give us the biggest smiles while being tossed around. And whenever he wasn’t being tossed around, he was (safely) exploring his surroundings, while we captured some romantic photos of his parents.

Most of the time, if Jeff was taking photos of just Robin and Victor, I was keeping an eye on Elliot, or vice versa. But we made sure to include Elliot as much as possible in these photographs too. But our time was about halfway over with, so we wanted to finish with the beach, and head into the forest. But, not without stopping at the bunch of goldenrod near the parking lot first.

Once we finished with the beach and the goldenrod, we dove into the forest. There was a little nook within the trees that had a bunch of boulders, and it was just too precious to not capture this beautiful family within it.

Now, it was time for our favorite part of any forest session… the path. Paths are a lot of fun for us, because we can do so much on them. We can walk, we can use it as a leading line towards you, the subject, and so much more! They truly help tell the story of the adventure, and so we use pathways quite often.

Here, we got some good shots of Robin with Elliot, before getting some solo “bridal” shots of Robin herself. Elliot wasn’t pleased to be away from his mom, but he held out fine with Victor, before getting his mother back, as we took some solo portraits of Victor as well.

We felt we still needed a few more romantic photographs with Victor and Robin alone, and so we set them up for some. While we took these photos, Elliot relaxed in his stroller for a bit, eating some cheerios. We finished taking some photos of Elliot and Victor together, before our final stretch of the Elopement session.

Next, we asked for Robin & Victor’s rings to grab some ring shots. They joked with us, “I knew they would rob us!”, and we knew then that they were fully comfortable with us. (Don’t worry, I joked back that it was time to run away, and even did a mock evil laugh.) After the rings were returned to their owners, we did some twirling photographs of Robin and Victor together on the path.

It was after this that it was time to say our goodbyes. Little Elliot was tuckered out, and the session time had run out as well. We had a phenomenal time with Victor, Robin, and little Elliot, and we truly hope they loved their elopement experience with us.

I truly hope you all enjoyed this adventure of ours, as much as we enjoyed being there. This Northern Michigan Elopement at Negwegon State Park was definitely on our bucket list, and we are thrilled to have crossed it off, so soon after moving up here. Remember, if you’re planning a similar event, please feel free to reach out to us! Until next time…

xoxo,

Jess