Alexis and Mike were married at Lake McDonald Lodge just a little ways inside the west entrance of Glacier National Park. We weren’t sure how everything would fare with the smoke from Idaho, Washington, and California and it turned out that our decision to head up to Avalanche Lake instead of Logan Pass after dinner was a good one. Logan Pass was totally socked in and we would’ve missed the grand views that are available up there earlier in the summer. And we didn’t know it at the time but the timing of their wedding was perfect, as a fire started inside the park just a few days later and Lake McDonald Lodge and the Going to the Sun Road have since been evacuated.
In the week prior to the wedding Mike’s uncle died and this hit him pretty hard. He came together well for the wedding and you’d never have noticed if you didn’t know the back story, but it was still important to Mike that he honor his uncle at the wedding. So his Best Woman carried a bottle of Coke down the aisle (his uncle’s favorite drink) and Mike took a swig of it before reading his vows. This was really touching, as was Mike’s filling the bottle with Lake McDonald rocks and water afterwards to take back to his uncle’s family.
Unfortunately dinner ended up being sandwiches from the convenience store, but Mike, Alexis, and Mike’s sister and partner were excellent sports about it as we hiked as fast as we could up the mountain to Avalanche Lake (reminder, none of us had been there before so we didn’t know how far away we were). We arrived with literally 20 minutes of remaining light (and these were the last glimmers of light), so we had to work fast. Alexis had to change back into her dress and we had to work around some tourists, but I am super pleased with the portraits we got. I made Alexis and Mike wade into a couple inches of water, which made for some beautiful reflection shots!
