Winter Park Fall WeddingWedding Details:

We love fall weddings with Aspen trees!  For Steve and Ashley we think they must also love the fall colors because they had them for both the engagement session at the Maroon Bells and on their wedding date.  We started off with a first look in a flat open parking lot / driveway area?  Middle of the road is what I hear someone shouting out sarcastically.  It had the openness needed to get the needed angles for 2 photographers and a videographer.  From there we made our way over to Winter Park to do some mountain biking (we wish).  They were doing a lot of construction up there so it was a bit of a trek but for the future having a Gondola up there will be super ideal.  For us we got two lift rides so more chances to get them riding the lift together.  The intent was to get some bigger mountain photos.  The downside was that the lighting was super bright that time of day but the perk is we come with off camera lighting to over power the sun.

The ceremony followed later out on the deck.  It was tight but you would be surprised how well they can fit people in on it.  From our angle it really just comes down to having the needed diversity of camera gear to be able to shoot any setup we are put into.  In this case we had a remotely triggered camera to get the side angle of the groom as there was no ability to get it without disrupting guests in the ceremony.  There are times where we got things like the videographer camera in the shot or a reflection in the glass so it is not perfect but worked well.  The cocktail hour was a bit hard to shoot as people were spread out and in smaller darker spaces.  Once dinner hit we were able to get more of the candid emotion photos we love.  We slid out for some photos at the lodge at sunset.  From there it was dinner and dancing.  The first dances were likely our favorite because they had some string lights in the back when coupled with our backlighting it made for very poppy looking images.

Woodspur Lodge Review:

It was (literally) not their first choice in a wedding venue but when your original venue shuts down entirely canceling on you when it is late in the booking season there is only so much you can do.  We say this to note that it was not one of those epic venues in the mountain but the perk is that they likely did not get a crazy expensive price.  The venue was nestled back up on a hillside in the Fraser area though it has a Winter Park mailing address.  It is surrounded by Aspen trees which will look rather awesome in the fall.  The Woodspur Lodge website is a bit dated so if you become impressed by an online web presence you will be let down as there is no information on weddings there, no photos, and the webpage is not design for modern web users.  We really did not see much out there on this venue in online presence or other photographers blogs.  What we can say is if you like the photos as seen here then take this as a vision of what can be done with the venue.  There were 3 occasions on the wedding day were things just seemed a little off with super minor things as in someone tied to the venue did not understand the impact of what they did.  One was parking a trailer in a place where we had the groom and were soon to take photos.  In the end the trailer was moved so the accommodation was appreciated.  Another was adding more chairs to the back of the tighter deck when there were still other seats available.  The impact is there would have been no place to take photos from during the ceremony and with 2 photographers and a videographer you need something.  The other was not opening the bar till 5PM.  Might be that someone was not available or a contractual thing but wedding schedules almost never go according to plan so you have to go with the flow a bit more.  Those are all super minor things.