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Henry Tieu Photography

Planning Resources

A tear rolls down bride's cheek as she hugs groom during their multi day wedding in Italy.
Planning Resources

Wedding Photography Tips for Couples: How to Plan for a Meaningful Experience (Not Just Photos)

ByHenry Tieu January 5, 2026January 7, 2026

Wedding photography tips for planning a day you’ll actually live, not just photograph. How to prioritize your experience and let the beautiful photos follow.

Read More Wedding Photography Tips for Couples: How to Plan for a Meaningful Experience (Not Just Photos)Continue

Bride and groom kiss after outdoor wedding ceremony by Lake Louise
Planning Resources

Wedding Planning Questions: 10 Questions to Help Guide Your Wedding Planning

ByHenry Tieu November 3, 2025November 3, 2025

10 important wedding planning questions to ask yourself to help you plan a celebration that’s intentional, meaningful, and completely yours.

Read More Wedding Planning Questions: 10 Questions to Help Guide Your Wedding PlanningContinue

Guests sit around a table under string lights during a micro wedding reception in Kauai.
Planning Resources

Micro Wedding Inspiration

ByHenry Tieu September 22, 2025November 17, 2025

You don’t have to follow a script when planning an intimate wedding, however, it can help to have some ideas. Here are a few of our favorite micro wedding inspiration and ideas from past couples.

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How to Plan a Multi-Day Wedding or Elopement
Planning Resources

How to Plan a Multi-Day Wedding or Elopement

ByHenry Tieu August 25, 2025November 17, 2025

Learn tips on how to plan a wedding weekend itinerary that is full of intention and meaning.

Read More How to Plan a Multi-Day Wedding or ElopementContinue

How to Elope in Moab: Your Complete Guide to Planning an Intentional Desert Adventure
Planning Resources

How to Elope in Moab: Your Complete Guide to Planning an Intentional Desert Adventure

ByHenry Tieu August 4, 2025August 28, 2025

Dreaming of an intimate desert wedding? Here’s everything you need to know to elope in Moab and plan your perfect adventure.

Read More How to Elope in Moab: Your Complete Guide to Planning an Intentional Desert AdventureContinue

Couple stands on a trail in Painted Hills during their Death Valley National Park desert elopement.
Planning Resources

The Ultimate Guide: How to Elope in California [Updated for 2026]

ByHenry Tieu July 28, 2025November 17, 2025

Planning a California elopement? Learn everything you need to know about how to elope in California including planning steps, legal requirements, and more!

Read More The Ultimate Guide: How to Elope in California [Updated for 2026]Continue

Bride and groom elope on the Oregon Coast on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Southern Oregon.
Planning Resources

How to Elope in Oregon [Updated for 2026]

ByHenry Tieu July 28, 2025November 17, 2025

Planning an Oregon elopement? Learn everything you need to know about how to elope in Oregon including planning steps, legal requirements, and more!

Read More How to Elope in Oregon [Updated for 2026]Continue

newlyweds kissing with the Swiss Alps and small homes in the background.
Planning Resources

12 Best Destination Wedding Locations Around the World

ByHenry Tieu July 7, 2025September 8, 2025

Discover the 12 best destination wedding locations around the world, from mountaintops in Italy to beaches in Mexico.

Read More 12 Best Destination Wedding Locations Around the WorldContinue

newlyweds kissing from the balcony of their acorn falls cottage, one of the best micro wedding venues in california.
Planning Resources

Top 11 Micro Wedding Venues in California

ByHenry Tieu June 2, 2025August 28, 2025

With its mountains, forests, and coastline, the Golden State has no shortage of beauty. So, here are our favorite micro wedding venues in California.

Read More Top 11 Micro Wedding Venues in CaliforniaContinue

How to Make Your Elopement Special and Personalized
Planning Resources

How to Make Your Elopement Special and Personalized

ByHenry Tieu May 7, 2025May 7, 2025

Wondering how to make your elopement special? We’re sharing a few ideas that we hope will inspire you to create something totally new and different for your elopement day.

Read More How to Make Your Elopement Special and PersonalizedContinue

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About Henry Tieu Photography: We are a Seattle-based team of destination elopement & intimate wedding photographers who specialize in honest storytelling, candid moments, and soulful portraits in breathtaking landscapes whether that's the mountains of Washington State or the wild beauty of faraway places across the world. Published in The New York Times, named Best Wedding Photography (2019 - 2025) and a Rangefinder Magazine Rising Star, we're honored to capture the kind of love that's deeply felt, artfully preserved and intentionally celebrated. As an Asian and LGBTQ-owned business, we believe your love deserves to be seen, respected, and remembered exactly as it is. Inclusivity, trust, and connection guide everything we do.

LGBTQ-friendly

BIPOC Inclusive

All skin colors & body sizes are welcomed

Let's tell your story. Together. All of it.

CONTACT US

Elopement Planning Resources

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@henrysdiary

The end of each wedding is always the saddest part The end of each wedding is always the saddest part.

It feels like reaching the final pages of a book you deeply love.

You know the pages will end so you read it slowly. Each word tend to fall further apart and the spaces between those words become the mixed feelings of wanting to hug goodbye just one last time but knowing we all have to part ways

This year, as a team, we said hello and goodbye to 67 couples 5 countries and 4 States. 

I am speaking for Nick and Sergio when I say that with every hello and every goodbye, it tugs at our hearts. We forever hope these photos become something you can hold onto…as evidence of our existence…as mementos of beautiful memories…as stories you’ll return to again and again, especially when all our hair turns gray.

Out of all the incredible photographers in the world, you chose us!
That trust has allowed us turn a passion into a career, build lives with our own families, and continue finding joy in this world.

Whether you’re family, a client, a friend, my team, part of our team, a peer, or a stranger on the internet who somehow found this page, thank you for giving us a life far greater than we could have ever imagined.

Thanks for the making 2025 the best one yet!
2026 couples and families, we are so ready for you

All digitals edited with @hdpresets
This life was once a wish. Now it’s our everyday This life was once a wish.
Now it’s our everyday

It’s only our second Christmas together but every Christmas with them feels like a chance to rewrite the story of this lifetime and to refocus on what truly matters

May we move a little slower,
May we stay a present a little longer.
May we never rush past the ordinary moments that are, in truth, everything.

From our family to yours, wishing you a holiday season filled with warmth, gentleness, and the kind of love that feels like home.

———
Digital and film 🎞️
I’m humbled to share that one of my images won the I’m humbled to share that one of my images won the 2025 Best of The Best Wedding Photos by @junebugweddings

This is the 6th year I’ve won this prestigious award and yet, the feeling hasn’t changed.
Still the same mixture of disbelief, gratitude, and vulnerability…because sharing art has always meant showing the parts of me that aren’t certain

I didn’t think I’d need photography as much as I do.

After all these years of documenting people’s stories, I’ve learned that whether in this life or in photography, it’s all about finding and appreciating the coexistence of light and shadow

Without shadow, we don’t quite appreciate the existence of light
Without light, there is nothing to immortalize

Sometimes, light already exists, we just have to be aware enough to invite it in
Sometimes, we have to find our own light even when darkness descends upon us….

If I can find light in photography, I know I can find it again and again in this lifetime. 
Because art, like light, only exists when we allow ourselves to be seen

Thank you L and F for trusting in me enough to share the light on this day with me, for walking through the forest in their white dresses, for embracing the cold wind to see how beautiful Mt. Baker is during blue hour

Thank you to Junebug Weddings and all the incredible judges @memorybox_photo, @belleartphotography,  @gpresets 
I know choosing the top 50 out of thousands of images from photographers all over the world isn’t an easy job. I am honored to be one among these amazing artists.

Photos on film and digital
Digital photos captured on @sonyalpha and edited with @hdpresets

Photography: @henrysdiary
Florals: @tangledrootsfloral
HMUA: @mstimssmakeupartist
Venye: @mtbakerhyggehus
The elopement world has changed so much since 2020 The elopement world has changed so much since 2020, and part of me grew afraid that all these shifts might change the way I approach storytelling someone’s wedding day

It was once a down low experience where people can break away from traditions, feel the courage inside their hearts to go after what they truly feel strongly about, let go of all the societal pressure, and arrive at the level of honesty they feel in their bones.

Their truth,
Their love,
Their story,
….all stripped down to its most honest shape

And slowly, somehow, it felt more and more like a glorified photoshoot.

I stopped sharing work at a certain locations because it didn’t feel right to have a couple waiting in line…in nature…for photos. 

Then I found a page in my journal “Just because you understand a piece of  thing doesn’t mean you understand the entirety of it”

And it hit me.
Just because I am an elopement photographer doesn’t mean I know everything about elopements. 
People have the choice to elope however way they want. 
The only thing I can fully control is how I show up, how I approach elopements, and how I honor their story, their intention, their. day.

For P and C, knowing their family couldn’t be there, although they desperately wanted them to, I wanted to focus on the experience and photos they could take home and show their parents

…to show how beautiful Tofino was on a cold September day, where the fog wrapped around the cliffs but never fully hid the sun
…to show how they ran on the shoreline, tasted the silty mist on their tongues, and laughed like they were the only two people in the world
…to show how quiet the forest became as they walked together…almost like the world softened a bit just enough to make space for them.
…to show how they held onto each other, not for a photo, but just because the moment moved them.

Because someday, when their parents flip through these photos, I hope they don’t just see what Tofino looked like.
I hope they feel what their children felt…and that is more than I could ever hope for being a wedding photographer

Thank you P and C for trusting me with your day

Film and digitals
Photography @henrysdiary on @sonyalpha / @hdpresets
I’m not going to lie. This year, I struggled creat I’m not going to lie. This year, I struggled creatively more than ever before 

I love creativity
I love observing people and sprinkle their joy into each photograph
I love being conceptual, playing  with light, pushing the limits of what people think wedding photography should be 

But somewhere along the way, I think I scrolled a little too much.
Social media tends to do that. 

It’s where I found my community, my people…Many of whom I’ve never met (yet)...we all live in different time zones…yet somehow, we all speak the same language of joy, art, small business grit, and that is how we lift each other up

But social media is also where the world feels like it’s constantly screaming at you
And for me, as a wedding photographer, I felt like I needed to do more…more flash, more editorial, more high end, more, more and more

8 years into photographing weddings yet somehow, the comparison game doesn’t seem to end now does it?

And then I received an email from M and A: “We love the moody photos and the lantern photos…The more artistic the better”

The night before their wedding, I sat alone in my hotel room going over all the emails we had and all the notes I prepared

The one thing I never prepare in advance is what photos I’ll take 

The thing about creativity in weddings is that you can’t pre-plan everything
You have to create space 
You have to leave room for moments to breathe

In that moment, I felt this jolt of energy, almost like a permission to be free, to create, to fail, to go in without really knowing exactly what will happen next, and most importantly, to experience it all. 

I think that’s the true joy of photography
And if we zoom out even further…it’s the true joy of weddings and elopements, too

So I brought the lanterns
They brought their glow-in-the-dark hair and tattoos
And the Oregon coast brought some unexpected sunshine on a late October day.

Thank you M and A for this freedom to create and congratulations again on your beautiful marriage

Digitals on @sonyalpha and edited with @hdpresets 
Films developed and scanned by @gelatinlabs
Grateful for this season of life where parenthood Grateful for this season of life where parenthood teaches us that the greatest gift we can offer someone is that feeling of safety and the permission to feel at home in their own skin, to know their worth, to know that simply being who they are is enough.

Grateful for my husband and his love language. Grateful for how he cares for all of us, whether we’re at home or a random hotel halfway across the world where I am documenting other people’s love stories. And even though traveling with twin babies isn’t always easy, we still get to be together…as a family. And that’s everything I ever need.

Grateful for our family and friends for being the anchor we can lean on.

Grateful for all of you, whether you are our clients or simply internet friends who happen to follow along the adventure that is our life, you help us achieve and live this quiet, ordinary-yet-extraordinary dream

Grateful for this chapter, this day, this moment, this life!

Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours. 🍂🧡🍁

———

Photographed on @sonyalpha a7iv, 28-70mm GM
Edited with @hdpresets in @lightroom

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  • Home
  • Elopement
    • Elopement Experience
    • Planning Resources
    • The Best Places To Elope
    • Washington Elopement Guide
    • Oregon Elopement Guide
    • California Elopement Guide
  • Info
    • About Us
    • Travel Schedule
  • Blog
  • Pricing
  • For Photographers
    • Education / Mentorships
    • HD Presets
    • Online Store
CONTACT US