I had the absolute pure pleasure of photographing this Bend Oregon intimate wedding a few months back. They had planned to elope to an area outside of Bend on a friend’s ranch. To their surprise their friend’s who own the ranch decided to invite all their friends and family as a surprise. So it went from an elopement to an intimate wedding extremely fast.  It was everything you could hope for in a wedding. Beautiful location, really good authentic couple and best of all, ranch puppies. The ranch is owned by the groom’s friends. John and Emily are both actors from New York City and decided to do something little different for their wedding.

I love a good intimate wedding like this in Banff or this one in the North Cascades. drove from Portland to the wedding outside of Bend. It was a lot of sage brush and mountains along the way. Central and eastern Oregon is an absolute stunner of a place though and the ranch was nothing short of amazing. I had only talked with John and Emily on the phone prior to driving out for the wedding. We met up the night before for a beer. I was really stoked that they were just gems of people face to face as well as our prior calls.

That high desert look is really hard to beat if you aren’t going for the mossy greens of western Oregon.