I have NO WORDS for the stunning beauty I witnessed at Aili + Joe’s Hatcher Pass engagement photos!!!! You know that emoji with the eyes wide? Or the one with the jaw dropped to the floor? That is ME every single time I think about this gorgeous place! Feels like a cross between Lord of the Rings and the Sound of Music, and I am HERE FOR IT!!!

Prepare for about a zillion exclamation points and the most vibrant colors because I was living my best dang life on this engagement session! Aili + Joe are both from Alaska, but I actually met Aili on the first day of my freshman year of college! She was one of my freshman orientation leaders who helped us learn our way around campus and led us in all sorts of fun games throughout the week. I saw Aili here and there throughout college, and I always remembered her as someone who was so mature, wise, smart, gorgeous, and hard working. When Aili + Joe got engaged at Christmas, she reached out to me almost immediately (seriously the BIGGEST compliment ever) and asked me to be their wedding photographer in Alaska! Truly a dream, and I’m sooo grateful to them.

This trip was my very first time to Alaska, and it was a crazy experience!! Being there during the summer means there are about 20 hours of sunlight per day which is totally wild for a California native. There were weird bugs I’ve never seen before, three different moose sightings, and a strange landscape with marshes and mountains and everything in between. It’s very hard to put Alaska into words if you’ve never been there, but the closest thing I can say is that it is a wild, untamed beauty of a place that you really need to see for yourself.

On the way up to Hatcher Pass, Joe told me that this is the spot where his dad brought him as he grew up. Instead of going to a normal park (or for me, a beach), this spot was where they would go to relax, run around, explore, adventure, picnic. Hatcher Pass holds a lot of sentimental value to these two, and it was really special to take some time together to honor the land that’s the basis of so many memories. Thank you, Aili and Joe, for sharing this little slice of heaven on earth with me. <3