Joe and Lia’s Causeway Coast Elopement — Baltimore to the Basalt Cliffs
Joe popped the champagne so hard the first time that it went straight over Lia’s dress. The second time, spray soaked the videographer.
The videographer and I were standing twenty feet away when this happened. The spray covered us both.
In 300+ elopements, that is my favourite champagne shot I’ve ever taken. The spray catching the light, Joe’s face, Lia’s reaction — you can’t choreograph that. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Joe and Lia flew from Baltimore to elope on Northern Ireland’s Causeway Coast — ceremony & luxury picnic above Dunluce Castle, portraits at Elephant Rock, Dunseverick, and Giants Causeway, a private chef waiting at the eco lodge that evening. A few weeks later I got them on Zoom to talk through the whole thing: the fear before committing, how the day actually felt, and what they’d say to a couple sitting exactly where they were twelve months ago.
Before you committed to eloping, what felt hardest or most uncertain?
Lia: I was really worried about regret. I grew up going to big weddings, and eloping felt very different from everything I’d been told a wedding was supposed to look like. I kept asking myself: am I going to look back one day and wish we’d done the big thing?
But it kept coming back to how I wanted to feel on the day. He’s my best friend. It wouldn’t have mattered to me whether there were 200 people there or just us — what mattered was that it felt special and celebrated. Once I had that clarity, the decision got a lot easier.
Joe: For me it was the family piece. How would it be taken? Would people feel like we didn’t want them there? But that concern resolved itself pretty quickly, which made it easier to move forward.
What actually helped you make the decision?
Lia: My therapist suggested something that ended up being really useful. She said: pick three words for how you want to feel on the day. Not the wedding you want — how you want to feel. Two of mine were special and celebrated. That became the filter for every decision we made from that point. Where to invest money, what to prioritise, even which photographer to book — everything went through those words. Photography was really important to us. Investing in a photographer we really trusted, and felt like we had good rapport with — that made it easy to decide that’s something we want to invest a lot of money in. No one has infinite money — but those three words really helped us decide what to invest in, and what we were okay spending less on.
Eloping in Ireland — a foreign country, 3,000 miles from Baltimore. Did that feel like a lot?
Joe: Not really. We’d always planned to do our honeymoon in Ireland, so in a lot of ways it was almost a relief. The ceremony and the honeymoon rolled into one — once it was done, we were already there and could just enjoy ourselves.
Lia: I get really bad panic attacks on planes, so I won’t pretend it wasn’t a choice. The only moment I felt genuinely overwhelmed was after we’d booked everything — that what if I regret this feeling came back. It went away once the details started coming together. Once I had the dress, the hair and makeup booked, a timeline. Once there was a plan and I had real connections with the people involved, it settled.
How did the day feel, compared to how you’d imagined it?
Lia: I knew I’d feel loved and special — that’s always how he makes me feel. What surprised me was how relaxed I was. I’m generally an anxious person. I thought I’d be having a minor meltdown at some point. But I wasn’t. We walked on the beach in the morning, had coffee — there was nothing about the day that made me anxious. It went exactly how we’d hoped.
Joe: I was pretty calm right up until we were actually driving to the location. Then once I was standing at the cliff edge waiting for Lia to walk toward me, the nerves hit. But I looked back over the cliff face into the water below and that steadied me. The landscape doing its thing.
Was there anything specific about the Causeway Coast that made the day feel the way it did?
Lia: The location density is just insane. When we showed people the photos afterward, everyone assumed we’d been driving around for hours. We told them the longest drive between any two spots was fifteen minutes. Four completely different locations in a single afternoon, and you don’t feel rushed once.
Also — people in Northern Ireland are genuinely kind. We’re from areas where everyone’s always in a hurry. Being somewhere that calm and relaxed, on the day you’re getting married, it does something to you.
“
“The sort of location density of the Causeway Coast is just like a cheat code for getting incredible pictures.”
Joe
Baltimore, USA 🇺🇸
Joe: And the crowds — or the lack of them. We’d been warned, but I still wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It was shocking how empty most of these places were. At the beginning of the day especially, when you’re still getting comfortable in front of the camera, not having an audience makes a real difference.
Did you have a moment when you thought — is this actually real life?
Joe: A few times. The biggest was at the ceremony — standing at the cliffs, waiting for Lia, looking back at Dunluce behind me. And then again during the picnic afterward, actually sitting still with the view in front of us and having space to take it in.
Lia: Mine was the bunnies. We were walking along one of the coastal paths and suddenly we were surrounded by wild rabbits. The girl who’d helped me find my dress had told me I looked like a Disney princess. Standing there in the grass with rabbits all around me, I thought of her and just had this moment of — yeah. This is exactly that.
“
“This is a time in your life where it’s okay to be selfish and choose yourself.”
Lia
Baltimore, USA 🇺🇸
When you replay the day in your head, what image comes up first?
Joe: When Lia started walking toward me at the ceremony.
Lia: The champagne.
Joe: …also the champagne.
The first time I popped it, it went straight over Lia’s dress. The second time I wound up and launched — and the spray covered the videographer completely. He was standing twenty feet away. I apparently just don’t know my own strength.
Lia: From where I was standing, I watched Rob’s face in real time and he clearly thought we were going to need a third bottle. But that photograph — the spray catching the light, Joe’s face, everyone’s reaction — it’s one of the best photos from the whole day. It’s on our wall now.
How do you think this experience shaped the start of your marriage?
Lia: Choosing to elope was a conscious decision to prioritise each other. And then doing it that way — where every single choice came from just the two of us, no outside voices — it set a tone. It made us think about how we want to keep doing that.
Joe: There was no compromise. No one else’s hands in the pot. Every single thing and choice we made only had input from one another. There were no outside voices of — oh, you have to do it like this, or it has to be this way because so-and-so did it this way. I’ve come to realise that’s actually a rare experience.
What did eloping give you that a big wedding at home in the States wouldn’t?
Lia: No performing. With a big wedding, you’re in front of people all day. There’s a version of you that’s always slightly switched on. This day, there wasn’t. We just were ourselves. I think it would’ve been harder to make that conscious decision to prioritise each other if we’d had a traditional wedding.
Joe: Flexibility. At one point Rob said — we have time for one more location, which do you want? And because it was just us, we could say actually, we’d rather not — let’s go somewhere else instead. There was no pressure to do anything we didn’t want to do. The whole day was ours.
If you could go back and talk to yourselves when you were still unsure, what would you say?
Lia: Don’t be afraid to choose yourself. Especially for brides — there’s a lot of pressure to be a people pleaser, to make sure everyone’s happy, to avoid being labelled difficult. I let that fear slow me down. But this is a time in your life where it’s okay to be selfish. Choosing what you actually want doesn’t make you a bad person.
Joe: Jump. I knew I wanted this. The instinct was there. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you to trust it.
If you met a couple on the fence about eloping in Ireland, what would you tell them?
Lia: You won’t regret it. The landscape is unlike anything most Americans have experienced. And the key is picking things that will actually mean something to you — not what a wedding in Ireland is supposed to look like, but what you want. Ireland gave us the flexibility to do exactly that.
Joe: Explore outside the cities. Americans think three and a half hours is a long drive — it’s nothing here. The way the atmosphere changes as you move around the island, the way the landscape shifts — I wasn’t expecting that. It’s genuinely incredible. And if you’re planning a honeymoon trip to Ireland anyway, rolling it together is one of the smartest decisions you’ll make.
A Causeway Coast elopement timeline — how the day actually looks
Monday 12 May 2025 — elopement day 7 hours coverage
Hair & makeup
Eco Lodge at The Salthouse, Ballycastle
Preparation photos
Rob arrives with flowers. Getting-ready portraits at the lodge.
Dunluce Castle Ceremony
Cliffside ceremony on private land overlooking the castle ruins, followed by a champagne picnic and portraits.
Elephant Rock, Ballintoy
Private farmland access. 15 minutes from Dunluce.
Dunseverick Castle
Ancient ruin on the cliff edge as the light begins to drop.
Giants Causeway
Sunset portraits on the basalt columns as the Atlantic light fades.
Private chef dinner
Back at the eco lodge. Dinner prepared and waiting on arrival.
Tuesday 13 May 2025 — sunrise session 1 hour coverage
Dark Hedges
One hour of coverage at first light, before the coaches arrive.
They spent the following ten days doing what they’d always planned — a full road trip around the island, Michelin-starred restaurants in Dublin and Belfast, and Ballyfin Demesne in County Laois, which Lia describes as “such a special place — even though it’s out of the way, it was worth it.” If you’re building your own honeymoon itinerary around an elopement, the best luxury hotels across Ireland and Northern Ireland are worth a look. The elopement didn’t replace the trip. It became the beginning of it.
I’ve been photographing elopements in Northern Ireland for over a decade and have worked with more than 300 couples. The ones who look back most satisfied are almost always the ones who made decisions the way Joe and Lia did — filtering everything through what they actually wanted, and trusting that.
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“Knowing that everything was set up, I could just focus on being present with Joe and no one was asking me questions or needing things.”
Lia
Baltimore, USA 🇺🇸
How Joe and Lia’s Northern Ireland Elopement came together
Joe and Lia booked one of my two-day elopement packages — coverage across both the elopement day and a sunrise session the following morning. They also added on my planning assistance, which means I took care of booking the hair and makeup artist, flowers, and officiant on their behalf.
That’s the part Lia was talking about when she said the anxiety settled once she had real connections with the people involved. She didn’t have to source those people herself, negotiate with vendors in a country she’d never visited, or wonder if she was making the right choices from 3,000 miles away. It was handled.
“Once we started having things to work on and information from other people,” Lia said, “it was like — okay, I feel good now. I know what’s going on and I have a connection with all of these people.“
By the time the elopement day arrived, the only thing Joe and Lia had to do was show up.
If you’d like the same — view the packages here or get in touch and we can talk through what your day could look like.
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