RF Wedding of the Week: A Christmas Eve Elopement by Tracey Buyce Photography

December 26, 2013

By Laura Brauer

For Saratoga Springs-based photographer, Tracey Buyce, the decision to document Richard and Lyndsay’s Lake Placid Lodge elopement on Christmas Eve was a no-brainer.

“Some people thought I was nuts to shoot a wedding on Christmas Eve, but it was really special  because it was just them, her brother and his fiancé,” Buyce says. “Elopements are also close to my heart because my husband and I eloped in 2008 in Switzerland.”

The couple were visiting New York City from Ireland, and wanted their wedding to be intimate, with photos to show family back home—thus they choose Lake Placid and Buyce, who they found via her website. Because Buyce had herself eloped in a foreign country, the connection was immediate.

Buyce documented the couple from 2 to 5 p.m., capturing them getting ready, their first look, ceremony and portraits at dusk. Because her roundtrip commute to Lake Placid from Saratoga Springs was five hours, “I spent more time on the road than I did shooting!” she says. But, “It was super romantic.”

For equipment, Buyce used her Canon 5D Mark III, and L-series lenses including the 50mm, 85mm, 70-200mm and 35mm for the ceremony, and natural light. “To set up lights for such an intimate ceremony would’ve taken away from what the couple wanted to achieve,” Buyce says.

Buyce says that although temperatures were in the single digits on this snowy day in the Adirondack mountains (cold enough to slow down her camera), the bride didn’t complain once. “She did her own hair and makeup and brought her gown and shoes from Ireland,” Buyce says.

And Buyce has no complaints either—although by the time she got home, her Christmas Eve dinner was leftover pizza and a peppermint cupcake. “I was totally fine with it because shooting weddings makes me so happy and I was in such a good mood,” she says.

View more of Tracey Buyce’s work.

View more Weddings of the Week.