This guide is designed to help you get started in planning out your wedding day in Iceland. Small destination weddings and Elopements offer a lot of freedom from traditions so we suggest you make things as personal as you can, plan out the perfect day for you and fill it with things that make your heart sing. There are hundreds of blog posts scattered around the internet on how to plan elopements in detail but there are a few key elements that are good to keep in mind when planning anything in Iceland and we are going to touch on them below.
For a more general info on elopement/weddings in Iceland check out our other post How to Elope in Iceland.
The Right Attitude or “Þetta Reddast”
Iceland is a very wild and unpredictable place, mostly due to the weather, so you have to put your self in the right islander mindset before you start planning anything in more detail. One of the more common fraises in Iceland is “Þetta reddast” which roughly translates to “everything will work it self out”. This fraise embodies the carefree attitude of the inhabitants and we highly recommend you keep an equally relaxed and flexible attitude when planning anything in Iceland. Sometimes this island just takes over and changes all your plans completely, that’s when you say “þetta reddast” and that’s always the case, things will maybe not end up exactly like you had envisioned them but they will work out somehow and be perfect in their own way.You might not get the perfect sunset light you were hoping for but maybe that moody fog you got instead just added that bit of mystery you were looking for all along.
Maybe the hiking trail was way muddier than expected but that awesome “dirt ombre” dress just makes your ceremony photos look way more bad-ass.
Or just maybe you get on the good side of Iceland and everything will be just as we planned it together. This is the beauty of the Iceland experience you never know what you are going to get.
2. Locations and travel
When planning your elopement/destination wedding we highly recommend you pick an area of Iceland you would like to get married in and then find everything you need with in that area. Your accommodation, ceremony location, photoshoot locations and perhaps a restaurant for dinner. This way you cut down on travel time and spend more of your day doing fun stuff and less time sitting in a car driving for hours between locations. Because although Iceland looks like a relatively small place the truth is that traveling between various parts of the country does take a lot of time.
If there are locations you really want to visit as a part of your photoshoot that are in different parts of the country you could opt for doing another photoshoot on a consecutive day. That way you keep the wedding day more relaxed and you don’t end up falling a sleep at the dinner table. Believe us, running around in all kinds of weather to get one of a kind photos is very tiring work.
3. Timeline
Like we mentioned earlier, elopements and small weddings offer a lot of freedom when it comes to planning out the actual day but with all this freedom and options it can be tricky to know where to get started and how you make it all fit with in the day. Where do you start?
First of all we think it’s important to concentrate on the fact that you are effectively creating memories and experiences and not checking off items on the “this is what instagram says you have to do on an Iceland wedding day list” so think about what makes an experience memorable for you as a couple.
Is it a steep hike to the top of a mountain to admire the view or is it a quiet walk on a beach at sunset? Is it eating dinner at a fancy restaurant or is it a pick nick while heading down that mountain you just conquered to say your vows on top of at midnight in June? Is it spending time just the two of you or with your closest friends or family?
Find out what it is that you want to remember your wedding day by and build your timeline around that.
Most wedding days then follow a similar timeline through out the day:
1. Getting Ready - this is were you get your hair & make up ready, get dressed and pack your bags before heading out into the day. This can be done in a cabin during a quiet morning with a cup of coffee, in a hotel with your friends hanging around making fun of you or this can even take place at the end of a hike just before you say your vows to each other.
2. Ceremony - Most ceremonies in Iceland take place with an officiant and if you want to make your ceremony legal that is a must, Check out our blog How to Elope in Iceland for further information about the various options available. You can also get married pretty much wherever you want in Iceland.
Pro tip: Write your own vows for each other. This makes the ceremony way more personal and makes the two of you more involved rather than just listening to the officiant the entire time.
3. Photoshoot - This part usually take place after the ceremony and in our experience that makes for a better photos. You will be more relaxed and your emotions will be running high after you finally got married, use that energy for the photoshoot. Here there are definitely no rules and we tailor make this experience with each couple so no shoot is exactly the same.
4. Dinner/Party/Picnic or just chugging a bottle of bubbly in a hot spring? End the day however you want to!
And now you may be asking what time of day is best for each item on this list? Here Iceland comes with it’s unique set of challenges that don’t necessarily apply to other parts of the world. And we will go over them in the next step.
4. Light
We are photographers so when it comes to helping you with your timeline for the day our number one priority is to maximise the chances of great photo opportunities happening in front of our lenses. To get good photos you need good light. That light is usually around sunset or sunrise when the sun is lower in the sky and the light is softer. But this point isn’t just about good photos because experiencing beautiful nature during golden or blue hours is something that we feel enhances the experience even more since the light adds to the beauty of any given place.
The light up here in the north follows the seasons and there is a huge difference in the amount of light we get depending on the time of the year. During the summer months we get daylight for close to 24 hours a day and in June the sun doesn’t really set until midnight. During December we only get 4 hours of daylight during the midday with the rest of the day covered in darkness.
This creates unique conditions for timing your elopements or weddings. Sometimes this means that you have to plan photoshoots during inconvenient times like very late at night or super early in the morning but that comes with the added benefit of less people around if we picked a popular place for your shoot.
For summer and fall our usual recommendation is to have the ceremony in the late afternoon , this way you get a relaxed, stress free morning, good light during the ceremony and the best light during the photoshoot.
Pro Tip: If you are getting married in June and don’t mind staying up late we highly recommend planning both the ceremony and photoshoot during the evening. The midnight light on a clear day in June is out of this world.
In mid winter we will have to handle things differently as there is only daylight during midday. Then we recommend a ceremony at noon followed by a photoshoot in the afternoon before it gets too dark to shoot. Like with everything there are pros and cons, this means we have to plan things on a tighter schedule but you might get lucky and enjoy the northern lights on your wedding day at this time of the year.
This whole light and season difference is generally not something people are familiar with or give to much thought to before they come to Iceland so this can all feel a bit overwhelming but no worries, we are happy to help you plan out the day, taking into account what time of year you are planning to visit and how to best arrange your adventure to get the most out of it.
5. The Bad Weather Plan
As already mentioned, Iceland is notorious for it’s unpredictable weather and you don’t have to read too many travel blogs to find the fraise “if you don’t like the weather in Iceland, wait 5 minutes”. And while this fraise is true most of the time there are also days where the rain just doesn’t stop all day, the wind just keeps blowing harder and you just have to deal with it.
For your photoshoot we highly recommend you just embrace the weather at hand and go with the flow. Some of our favourite wedding images have been made in terrible weather. Bad weather doesn’t mean bad photos it just means that we have to work a bit harder to make them. The weather adds so much character to your images and it makes you more present in the moment, making the images more real somehow. Not to mention that battling through the weather to achieve a goal together is the definition of adventure.
For your ceremony it might be a good idea to have a back up plan for the worst case scenario, if it’s just the two of you for an elopement we can usually find a location that provides a bit of shelter but if you are bringing a lot of guests for a destination wedding it might be a good idea to have a back up indoor location so you can save grandma from the storm. This is where having a local wedding planner comes in handy.
Hopefully this gives you a starting point to planning out your day, we are then always willing to help out our clients with their timeline planning of the day based on their preferences and crazy ideas so don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions.
