San Juan Island Wedding Video at Roche Harbor Resort — Washington Elopement Videographer & Photographer

bride and groom at roche harbor resort in forest for san juan island wedding

Irish Inspired Wedding at Roche Harbor Resort on San Juan Island

MICHELLE & PAUL —

In mid 2020 I met up with Michelle and Paul to captured their engagement on Whidbey Island. Before the pandemic began, these two had plans to have their wedding in Ireland, where much of Michelle’s family is from and some still live. Like most weddings planned for 2020 these two had to pivot their wedding day plans and come up with a new way to honor their love story and share it their family and friends. While still wanting to have some sort of destination wedding, these two found Roche Harbor Resort on the northern tip of San Juan Island. With most of Michelle and Paul’s family coming from out of town, Roche Harbor was a perfect local destination to give their family and friends the full Washington experience.

San Juan Island, not to be confused with The San Juan Islands - a group of 172 islands resting in the Puget Sound, is the northern most island near Victoria known for whale watching and scenic trails. In order to get to San Juan Island you must take either a seaplane or a ferry. Leaving from Anacortes the ferry ride is 1 hour, or taking the more scenic route a 3 hour and 45 minute ferry from Seattle, landing at Friday Harbor. Traveling by ferry is something that is so normal for much of Western Washingtonians, while being so strange for those not from the state. Because of this, I love getting to incorporate all the details of being in a ferry into my films, like I did on this Olympic National Park Coast Elopement Film.

BEHIND THE EDIT —

When I asked Michelle and Paul how they’d like their wedding film to feel, they said they wanted to remember what it was like to get there, the environment and all the sights and sounds that come with being on San Juan Island. This is something that I aim to do in all my films, create visuals and a sound design that is going to put my viewer right there in the film. I want my couples to feel with all their senses when they watch my films back. I did this by adding b roll of the ferry, the sounds of the ferry reaching the dock, the lapping of waves on the docks of Roche Harbor.

One of the most serendipitous aspects of this whole day was how it ended. Just as Michelle, Paul, Amanda and I were joining the reception after taking sunset photos, we heard a the sound of someone playing a flute in one of the balconies overlooking the resort. As we got closer, Michelle noticed that is was an Irish Flute, a sound she was familiar with after growing up around her Irish family members and visiting Ireland. Even after having to cancel their original wedding plans in Ireland because of the pandemic, Ireland still found them in the form of a complete stranger, visiting from Ireland that exact same night, practicing his Irish flute.

If you stay till the end of the film, I was thrilled to have been able to incorporate this man’s beautiful music into their video.