Estes Park Wedding At Taharaa Mountain LodgeWedding Details:

We love photography of those key moments in your life when things will never be the same.  For Aaron and Jordan this one was their wedding day in Colorado.  We first got our taste of their playful joy in the proposal at Sapphire Point.  On the day of the wedding while no one can deny having an Elvis come and dance with you isn’t playful there was certainly a seriousness and certainty to things.  Overall the day was kept rather simple with a focus on having a good party for the guests.  Things like having all the guests get up to surround the dance floor speaks to just one way to have people be more engaged and not sitting in the back of the room.

From a food standpoint there were also some unique things as in the number of courses that came out.  There was the cocktail hour appetizers, salad, buffet dinner (at which point people had their fill), cake desert, ice cream bar, and our favorite – the end of the night mini burgers and fries bar.  The ice cream was likely a perk for the many kiddos at the wedding.  In our mid reception interview we heard the kiddos were getting cake and ice cream servings  which likely was helping promote their festive dance moves.  When the mini burgers came out the news spread quickly and women flocked to the food.

Taharaa Mountain Lodge Review:

We love it when it when a wedding venue delivers consistent service.  Taharaa Mountain Lodge is one of those places that we always love coming back to for weddings.  When we get there the setup is typically well under way which you think would be expected but very often it is a rushed last minute thing.  The other weddings we have done there have made use of an outdoor wedding site.  The ceremony for this November wedding was on the deck.  We theorize this might have been due to never knowing what kind of weather you are going to get.  We are partial to the outdoor area as you can always add chairs if you need more space, you have more angles, and the lighting is better.

With both locations the setup was well put together.  One ‘downside’ to doing things on the deck is that guests will flood in the reception hall space right after the ceremony whereas over at the outdoor ceremony location we find people generally stay more out on the patio for cocktail hour.  Either way the thing to take away is that you can do weddings there year round.  Unless it is a very small group the other thing to note with a ceremony on the deck is that you are very limited on angles and variety.  How we overcame this was to have 2 remote cameras up front covering the side angles.  This was so that we could be non disruptive but still capture the wedding.

On a side note Jubilation Catering served things up and as always with them the food is delicious and the service excellent.  When you see the same team of people over years it speaks a lot to the quality of the company.  We would also recommend Gotta Dance DJs for being able to do well with the audio / music.  What we found uniquely excellent for them was how well they could blend two songs together.  There were many times we couldn’t even tell it was another song with how well the beats aligned.  We had a wedding a month ago that was the complete opposite and felt more like fingers down a chalk board.  All that to say the best DJs are the ones you don’t notice and who let things flow naturally.  If you like this venue here is our other work at Taharaa Mountain Lodge.