REAL WEDDING: Spring mountain wedding at Emerald Lake Lodge

The Couple: Andrea & David

The Season: End of April where all the snow is melting & the mud attacks people!

The Location: Emerald Lake Lodge & the Natural Bridge in Yoho National Park

A Snippet About the Day: I’m a little embarrassed about what happened at Andrea & David’s spring mountain wedding at Emerald Lake Lodge last April. I try my best to be pretty quiet & fairly unobtrusive when I’m photographing a wedding ceremony. Let’s set the stage a little here though. The end of April means the 8 million feet of snow that fell during the winter is starting to melt. Everywhere. The Viewpoint was looking kinda gross when I got there with big muddy patches snowing. I spent probably 30 minutes shoveling snow into the the area to make it look prettier. Because the Viewpoint is on a hill, there’s a lot of water run off… you can see where i’m going with this. So we get about three minutes into this spring mountain wedding ceremony & i’m trying to run around all of the snow & go down the one side of the hill at the Viewpoint to get a different angle & not run across the front to be in the way of the guests. Bad idea. I had a super slippery muddy patch & went down hard. I was wearing winter boots & a skirt (very stylish ensemble) and was covered up to my hips on one side in mud. I looked like a real life swamp monster. I’m not even joking. Both of my cameras hit the ground as hard as I did & went into the snow & mud. Oh hell. I quickly got myself back up & discovered nothing was working. I won’t get into specifics, but after a few seconds of panicking, I realized I could still get the cameras to function when I manually focused the lenses. I always have the beep on my camera so even though none of the other electronics were working, the beep told me it was focused. The visual display on the back wouldn’t work. I couldn’t change focus points. I couldn’t go into the menus to do anything. Seriously a nightmare. But I tried to not show how stressed I was & kept going. Later Andrea said my fall helped break the tension for them during the ceremony, so at least some good came out of it from the sight of me hitting the ground hard getting covered in so much mud that it was still in my boots months later, I couldn’t get it all washed out!! We finished up the day, I didn’t let them know just how much I was freaking out. We got really great photos & I had an awesome time with them. But I have learned my lesson in avoiding mud during their spring mountain wedding. I can climb rocks & trees, wade through freezing lakes & rivers, but a muddy slope is my immortal enemy now! So if I have to run across in front of people now, I’m going to if it means I can avoid the mud! That is the lesson that I learned from Andrea & David’s spring mountain wedding at Emerald Lake Lodge! Even with a bunch of other lenses & being prepared shooting multiple cameras, some crazy things can happen that you just can’t predict! I learned to just roll with it to not show my stress so it wouldn’t ruin the day for them!

Looking for more intimate wedding & elopement inspiration at Emerald Lake Lodge like this spring mountain wedding? Oh boy, you’re in luck! I’ve got lots to share like this magical Winter Wonderland Wedding! How about this winter intimate wedding? Try this beautiful winter elopement! Maybe this NYE winter elopement! Or this fabulous snowy elopement? Check out this Emerald Lake Lodge winter elopement! Peruse this Emerald Lake Lodge wedding! Take a peek at this November wedding at Emerald Lake! Emerald Lake is the place if you want a snowy winter elopement! Try this summer wedding at Emerald Lake!

Thinking about planning an epic mountain elopement of your own? You need to see my 5 Tips for Planning your Dream Mountain Elopement! Also see my Guide to Eloping in the Canadian Rockies to help figure out the best place for you to get married!