Listen, if there’s love and down-to-earth humans involved, odds are pretty good I’m already reaching for my camera. And goodness knows, if you’re getting married in Vermont, your options for intimate wedding locations are… plentiful. To say the least.

You can opt for an elopement in the mountains, where the air feels a little thinner and the wind runs off with half of your vows. 

You can roll with a barn that has hosted a hundred harvests and now, somehow, inexplicably— a wedding.

You can make this intimate wedding photographer’s heart very happy and host the backyard celebration to end all backyard celebrations, complete with cafe lights and a dance floor made entirely of grass. 

Or, you can go full Vermont on us and hold your wedding at an inn or lodge where the whole guest list ends up recounting the evening’s events over coffee the next morning. 

Needless to say, there are no shortage of beautiful Vermont wedding ‘venues’ (and I use that word loosely)— especially if you’re on the hunt for intimate wedding locations that feel like they belong to the two of you and no one else.

“So, what is it about intimate wedding locations that you love so much?,” you might ask

After photographing weddings here for a good long while, I’ve noticed a pattern. There are four kinds of wedding days that make me say an enthusiastic: absolutely, tell me more. 

And they all tend to have one thing in common: the place and the people feel inseparable. Like the wedding could only have happened right there, in that exact corner of Vermont— where the setting and the story almost feel like they belong to each other.

The Small Gathering Wedding

[AKA, the kind of wedding where everyone in the room would give a speech if you let them]

I think Layne would agree with me when I say that marrying an art teacher has its perks. Namely, when you end up with a wedding that looks like a finished masterpiece before the bride and groom even step into the frame. And once they do, well… it only gets better. 

Kayla may as well submit her wedding day for a place in the Louvre for how much intention and artistry she poured into it. From the thrifted tableware to the embroidered welcome banner to the art nouveau-inspired invitation suite, every single detail was a lesson in thoughtfulness.

Kayla and Layne gathered their twenty person guest list at the E.V. Hamilton, a cozy cottage and barn in Stowe, VT that they rented on— wait for it— AirBnB. 

(No, seriously. If you weren’t aware of the whole rustic-bed-and-breakfast-turned-Vermont-wedding-venue situation before, you definitely are now. And also… there’s a blog post for that.)

Vendors | Cake: Blue House Bakeshop | Bride’s Dress: Jenny Yoo Sparrow Floral Wedding Gown from Anthropologie | Venue: E.V. Hamilton | Catering: Sweet & Savory | Chair Rentals: Vermont Tent Company

Kayla and Layne have walked through more together than most couples do before they ever make it to the end of the aisle. They’ve experienced enough cumulative losses to make this moment feel even more significant.

I think that’s what I love most about being an intimate wedding photographer. 

When the guest list is cut down to your nearest and dearest and the setting feels more like a home than a wedding venue, there’s real estate for the emotions of the day to exist in full. You let the hugs last longer. You’re not so quick to wipe away the tears. The people gathered around you aren’t just guests; they’re the people who helped get you here.

Even the sky on Layne and Kayla’s wedding day seemed to be in on the plot. Smoke drifting down from the Canadian wildfires left the whole afternoon wrapped in this soft haze that made the light feel almost filmy, like the day itself had been dipped in nostalgia.

Days with this much emotion built into them are exactly what intimate wedding locations are built for.

The Runaway Wedding

[AKA, a wedding day that feels more like an adventure than an event]

If you think about it, being an elopement photographer is one of the greatest privileges in the world. Two humans-in-love decide to scrap the guest list entirely and run off to get married… but then, inexplicably, they invite little old me and my Super 8 camera to tag along. 

Lucky for them, I’m licensed to marry people, too— which means it can quite literally just be the three of us (and the dogs, of course)— escaping to whatever Vermont elopement location their little hearts desire.

Gabs and Sam chose to say their ‘I do’s’ (and me to say to ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’ somewhere between shutter clicks) at The Inn at Mountain View Farm in Burke, VT.

And as is often the case with a good elopement, the location choice was anything but random.

Burke is a big mountain biking town, which just so happens to be one of Gabs and Sam’s favorite ways to spend time together. On any given weekend, there’s a decent chance you can find them out there somewhere: pedaling up a hill, flying down the other side, and calling it a (good) day. 

So getting married here didn’t feel like some cinematic decision based exclusively on landscape and vibes. It felt more like the natural extension of a life they were already building together— just with slightly nicer clothes and a photographer third-wheeling the whole thing.

Vendors | Venue: Inn at Mountain View Farm | Cake: Red Poppy Cakery | Bride’s Ring: Lamarche Fine Jewelry

One of the questions I ask couples in my Story Canvas is what inspires them most. Sounds, smells, songs, feelings— anything that they find occupying their mind lately is fair game. I take those answers, tuck them into the back of my elopement photographer mind, and look for every opportunity to weave their references into the photos.

Gabs answered that she’d been particularly inspired by the way light hits trees when the forest is mossy and full of pines. For Sam, it was getting his hands dirty making things and the unmistakable smell of a workshop. (I’m married to a woodworker myself, so maple shavings are basically my signature scent.)

Both of these responses made for a dang good guide to photographing their day.

You can see it in the moments right after their first look, when the forest light wrapped around them exactly the way Gabs described. And later, when Sam was outside washing their pup before we headed to the farm— sleeves rolled up, hands in the water, very much in his element.

With no timeline breathing down your neck and no room full of guests waiting for the next thing to happen, the small, seemingly ordinary pieces of life (like picking burrs out of the train of your bride’s dress, naturally) have more space to show up. And everything about you that screams ‘meant to be,’ becomes all the more obvious.

Which, if you ask me— your friendly neighborhood elopement photographer— is the magic of it.

The Inheritance Wedding

[AKA, when love and lineage share the same air]

As someone who grew up in Vermont— wandering the Shelburne Museum on school field trips, running through Shelburne Farms, and now bringing my son here to explore— documenting this history-rich wedding at Brick House felt like more than a celebration. It felt like stepping into the living continuation of a story that’s been written here for generations. 

Electra and Watson’s high-class wedding was nothing short of an homage to Vermont soil and American history. 

Vendors || Wedding Coordinator: Harlow Dahlia Events | @harlowdahliaevents || Venue: The Brick House at Shelburne Museum || Florist: Blomma Flicka Flowers @blommaflickadesign || Catering: Sugarsnap | @sugarsnapvt || Band: The Bodacious Supreme || Cake: Sweet Simone’s | @sweet_simones || Rentals: Vermont Tent Company | @vttent

Electra is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Electra Havemeyer Webb, the founder of the Shelburne Museum and a woman who had an uncanny eye for the beauty of everyday life (which, frankly, makes her my spiritual predecessor). And in a moment that felt almost too perfect for words, my bride Electra wore her mother’s wedding dress and the original Electra’s veil—now preserved in the Shelburne Museum’s collection.

Electra’s entire ensemble carried a narrative of inheritance. 

These weren’t simply beautiful pieces chosen and styled for a wedding day. They were objects that had been waiting—ever so patiently—for the next person in the lineage to fall in love.

The beaded bodice, the soft silk skirt, the pearl necklace layered at her collarbone… it was like she had stepped directly into the family archive.

Weddings like this aren’t just milestones of two people deciding to spend their lives together. They’re reminders that love rarely begins in a single moment. It grows out of the people who came before, the places that shaped us, and the stories we inherit whether we realize it or not.

When a wedding day carries that level of history with it, documenting it feels less like photography and more like stewardship.

The Backyard Wedding

[AKA, the house that raised you, throwing the biggest party it has ever seen]

When I tell you this was the backyard wedding dreams are made of, I’m saying it with my chest.

Hannah and Carter got married at Hannah’s grandmother’s house in Greensboro, VT because it was where the couple spent a lot of their time getting to know each other. The house that had already gotten to witness their beginning was now getting to host the main event… and in autumn, no less. 

Be still, my beating heart, much? This legacy-loving, beauty-in-the-ordinary aficionado was living for this unsuspecting intimate wedding location (and for Hannah’s grandmother, who served as the emotional epicenter of the entire day).

Vendors | Florals Florals: Blomma Flicka Flowers | Reception Music: EmaLou & The Beat | Ceremony Music: Catamount Quartet | Hair and Makeup: The Rehair Shop | Reception Venue: Circus Smirkus

As a documentary wedding photographer, nothing gets me going quite as much as having my pick of the emotion to choose from. During the entire ceremony, I had my head on a swivel, trying to click my shutter fast enough to catch every reaction: misty-eyed parents, cousins leaning into each other, friends laughing through their tears, Hannah’s grandmother watching the whole thing unfold from her seat like she already knew this moment had been on its way for years.

And just when you thought the day couldn’t get more Vermont…

The ceremony wrapped up and guests slowly wandered down the road toward the reception, with the help of a local non-profit youth circus to help them get safely (and with pomp and circumstance) from Point A to Point B. 

They turned the wedding’s walk to thee backyard wedding reception into something that felt like a cross between a hometown parade and the most joyful wedding procession imaginable.

And standing there watching it all unfold (and getting it down on film because this wedding practically begged for it!), it was hard to imagine the day happening anywhere else. The whole thing— the slow morning getting ready with grandma, the ceremony, the parade, the tent party after— fit together in that way that only happens when the setting and the story have clearly known each other for a long time.

Care to see how this one played out from start to finish? Read more about Hannah and Carter’s backyard wedding here.

So, which intimate wedding location in Vermont is the right one?!

The short answer? Probably whichever one makes the most sense for the love you’re already living.

The weddings that still live rent-free in my mind long after the memory cards are backed up and the gallery is delivered always seem to share the same strange little quality:

The intimate wedding location doesn’t feel chosen so much as… inevitable. Like the couple and the setting had already been circling each other for years.

A backyard where the two of you became friends, and then more-than-friends. A museum built by someone in the family line, where half of the guests already know which staircase creaks. A mountain town with a trailhead that knows your bike treads better than its own dirt.

When the setting and the story recognize each other like that, the wedding stops feeling like an event and starts feeling more like the continuation of something that was already underway.

Which, if you ask me, is a pretty good way to begin a life together.

If you’re in the early stages of planning a Vermont wedding and still figuring out which corner of the state your story belongs in, I’d love to hear about it. You can join my 2027 wedding waitlist here to be the first to know when my books open.