Lolo and Andrew were married at Snowpine Lodge on a Friday at the end of July 2026. Alta sits at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon, forty minutes from Salt Lake City and a world away from it, and in summer the ski runs go green and the whole valley turns into a lawn. The ceremony faced straight up the mountain. Guests were handed parasols against the afternoon sun.
A string quartet played from the deck under a scalloped awning, and the sound carried across the lawn and up the hill. Nobody was in a hurry.
Their people
This was a wedding about a group of friends. You could see it in the college flag that came out during cocktail hour and the four women in green and pink who had clearly known each other a long time. My job on a day like this is to be near enough to catch it and far enough not to change it. I photograph the couple as two people, and I photograph the room as the reason they are there.
Cocktail hour moved to the pool. Trays came past, the light softened, and the mountain did what it does at that hour. I do not chase golden hour. The warmth in these pictures lives in the film, not the sun, and it is there in the shade as much as in the light.
Dinner under the tent
Dinner was under a clear tent on the lawn with rattan lanterns overhead, so the ridgeline stayed in the room through the toasts. Lolo walked through it in her gown and Andrew hugged his way between the tables. I want the gallery to read as one evening, in the order it happened, and this is the part where a wedding stops being an event and becomes a dinner with everyone you love.
Two frames to end on. The cake by the wood wall, with its spray of peach and blue on top, and Lolo and Andrew on the deck with a glass each and the mountain over their shoulders. The second is the one I would print. Not because it is the prettiest, though it is close, but because it is exactly who they were that day.
With
Venue: Snowpine Lodge, Alta, Utah
Photography: Christopher Cook
