July Wedding at the Colter Bay Beach - GRAND TETON national Park

Venue - Colter Bay cabins, Colter Bay Swim Beach, Oxbow Bend, and my favorite off-the-radar little spot on Grand Teton’s inner park road.

I live at Colter Bay yet it was the one Grand Teton wedding venue I had yet to work, so I was thrilled to shoot Zach and Kira’s wedding in this Teton place I know best. My partner and I walk our dog on a loop through the campgrounds to the beach every evening and watch the sunset from the picnic tables, so it’s a place I deeply know and love.

I met them at the Colter Bay cabins where they were staying. While Kira got ready with her friends and family in their larger cabin, Zach left to get dressed and play cards in their friends’ smaller cabin down the hill.

We were running late, as one does at weddings, so we skipped the individual portraits before and drove down to the ceremony location at the beach. It was a bit of a scorcher day by Teton standards and the beach was packed with swimmers and boaters. We managed to find enough parking though and made it just on time for the ceremony.

At Colter Bay, you can choose between having your ceremony on the beach or above in the picnic area. Zack and Kira opted for the picnic area for accessibility, which also provided some nice shade between photos to get out of the intense Wyoming sun.

After signing their marriage license and taking photos with family and friends, we headed down to the beach for some couples photos on the lake. This is one of the only wedding venues in Grand Teton near the water and with a main view of Mount Moran, so it’s a nice change of scenery from the rest of the park.

We wanted to visit another location but Colter Bay is fairly isolated in the northern part of Grand Teton. It isn’t near any of the other main photography spots in the park but luckily (!!!) I know this park very well from living here and knew of a little under the radar spot on the inner park road. The road looks like it goes directly to the Grand Teton and makes for really special photos that are completely unlike the average Teton wedding images.

The day had a slight chance of storms and the clouds and wind started to build in a way that I thought meant imminent rain. Incredibly, it stopped right as a reached us without ever precipitating and the clouds changed directions, giving us a nice shady break from the hot sun.

I was initially only supposed to shoot for six hours but after getting here and seeing the evening lighting, Zach and Kira decided to add a quick sunset shoot at Oxbow Bend. They got out of their dinner a little too late for the golden hour glow at Oxbow but we got gorgeous clouds and blue hour lighting above the Snake River.