Sarah + Sagar // a Denali adventure elopement in Alaska

This week was easily the most unreal part of my five years as a wedding photographer. I’ve photographed some wild elopements, a lot of beautiful weddings, but nothing as wonderfully unique and off-the-grid as this adventure with Sarah, Sagar, and their two best friends. We woke at 6AM to make the trek up to Talkeetna, loaded up on snacks and NPS permits, and set out across the toe of the Ruth Glacier with K2 Aviation.

What happened next was… surprising. This was the very first day of the season that K2 had clear enough weather to fly, and we’d spent months going over logistics for this day, establishing “what if we get stuck in a snowstorm on the glacier” contingencies, prepping gear, and getting mentally ready for it to be Really Damn Cold. I didn’t have a thermometer handy so I can’t tell you exactly how warm it was, but we hopped out of our bush plane to what felt like summer (a summer with around 89’ of snow…) and were down to base layers in under 5 minutes.

We hauled our 500lbs of gear (including 75lbs of beer, obviously) up to the cabin and what followed can only be described as pure, unbelievable magic. I did not know much of this in advance, but these two went truly all out - from elaborately prepared food, to Sarah’s non-traditional embroidered floral wedding dress, to a preserved bouquet and tiny wedding cake, and even hand-designed wedding programs. So many lovely moving pieces that all fell perfectly in to place.

We played around on the nunatak for a couple hours before diving into the most beautifully personal ceremony I’ve ever documented. A magic show, whiskey intermissions, dog vows, and the north peak of Denali coming out from behind its cloud. There’s something hard to grasp about standing at ~6000’ and still looking up to a 19000’ summit, but it’s incredibly fitting that it was the backdrop to these twos’ vows.

Without further ado, here is the most wild and gorgeous wedding I will may ever document.