If you’re planning a Drumheller elopement, Patricia and Kenny’s day is full of inspiration for doing things a little differently! Their Alberta Badlands adventure included a ghost town first look, vows overlooking Horseshoe Canyon, traditional Chinese attire, an intimate tea ceremony, a vegan picnic among the Hoodoos, and sunset portraits in one of Alberta’s wildest landscapes. Even better, their day shows just how easily you can mix adventure, cultural traditions, and the things that feel completely, wonderfully YOU.

---

If getting married somewhere that looks a little like another planet sounds more exciting than a traditional wedding venue, may we introduce you to Drumheller?!

Patricia and Kenny’s Drumheller elopement took us through an Alberta ghost town, across the otherworldly landscape of the Badlands, and into the Hoodoos for a sunset picnic and their own intimate take on a Chinese tea ceremony.

There was a thrifted wedding dress.
A camper van.
Locally grown flowers.
Vegan treats.
Traditional Chinese attire.
Tea in the desert.

Basically, this one had our name written ALL over it.

Why Elope in Drumheller, Alberta?

When people picture an Alberta elopement, their minds usually go straight to the mountains.

Banff! Canmore! Turquoise lakes! Giant peaks!

And listen, we LOVE those places.

But drive east of Calgary instead of west and Alberta suddenly starts looking a little like freaking Mars.

Welcome to Drumheller! 👽

The Canadian Badlands are filled with striped canyons, hoodoos, exposed rock, enormous stretches of prairie, and landscapes that look completely different from what you’ll find a few hours away in the Canadian Rockies.

It’s weird, dramatic, and even a little spooky in places.

WE LOVE IT HERE.

For couples who want an Alberta elopement that feels adventurous but aren’t necessarily dreaming about an alpine lake, Drumheller opens up a completely different world.

If this is already sounding like your kind of place, our complete guide to eloping in Drumheller gets into the planning side of making it happen.

Patricia and Kenny’s day, however, is a pretty great example of what actually getting married out here can look like!

Starting Their Drumheller Elopement in a Ghost Town

First stop?

A literal ghost town.

Patricia and Kenny began their day in Rowley, Alberta, a tiny historic town surrounded by the prairie. It was such a fun spot for their first look because it felt completely unexpected.

Old buildings. Prairie stretching out around them. A little spooky. A lot cool.

Exactly our kind of place. 😂

They arrived in a camper van, got ready for the day, and then it was time for Kenny to see Patricia!

A Thrifted Wedding Dress + Locally Grown Flowers

Patricia’s white wedding dress was thrifted, which we LOVED.

There’s something very cool about giving an existing piece a completely new story, especially when it fits so naturally with the rest of the choices you’re making for your wedding day.

Her florals carried that same thoughtful approach.

Stacy from Little Daisy Florals created Patricia’s bouquet using her signature mix of delicate blooms and beautiful textures. Stacy and her husband grow flowers on their own farm near Calgary, working with seasonal and locally grown flowers while being intentional about reducing what needs to be shipped in.

And LOOK at that bouquet!!!

All those smaller blooms gave it so much texture and fullness without making it feel overly structured or heavy. Against the wide-open Alberta landscape, it was PERFECT.

We will forever be suckers for flowers that look like they belong exactly where you’re standing!

An Elopement Ceremony in the Alberta Badlands

From Rowley, we headed deeper into the Drumheller area for Patricia and Kenny’s ceremony.

And this is where the landscape gets WILD.

Horseshoe Canyon Elopement Views

Horseshoe Canyon is one of those places that makes you stop for a second when you reach the edge.

The prairie suddenly drops away into layers of ridges, valleys, and striped rock formations stretching across the Alberta Badlands.

It does not look real.

Naturally, our reaction was basically:

Yep.
Vows go HERE!!!

Patricia and Kenny found their spot overlooking the landscape and exchanged vows with the Badlands stretching out behind them.

No elaborate ceremony setup was needed.
The landscape was already doing PLENTY.

Afterward, we wandered around the area together for portraits and gave them time to actually enjoy where they were rather than arriving, taking five photographs, and immediately jumping back into the van.

That’s one of the things we love about planning a Drumheller elopement. The landscape itself can become part of the experience, and there are so many ways to build a day around actually exploring it.

From Wedding Dress to Traditional Chinese Attire

After exploring the Badlands, it was time for an outfit change!

Patricia and Kenny headed back to the camper van to change into traditional Chinese attire, bringing a completely different and incredibly meaningful part of their day to life.

Kenny is Chinese, and Patricia wanted to celebrate his heritage alongside him, which we LOVED.
Because who says an elopement means leaving the traditions that matter to you behind?!

That’s actually one of our favorite things about elopements. You get to look at all the traditions, expectations, and this-is-just-how-weddings-are-done things and decide which ones feel like you.

Keep what matters. Put your own spin on it. Leave the rest!

For Patricia and Kenny, that meant changing into traditional attire and heading into the Hoodoos for their own intimate take on a Chinese tea ceremony.

And this part of the day was SO freaking cool!!! 🫖✨

Bringing a Chinese Tea Ceremony Into an Elopement

Traditionally, a Chinese wedding tea ceremony involves family and is often an opportunity for a couple to show respect and gratitude to parents and elders.

Patricia and Kenny decided to create their own intimate version of that tradition.

Just the two of them!

Tea was already something they genuinely enjoyed together. They’re big tea drinkers, and the intentional act of making and sharing it meant something to them.

So rather than trying to recreate a larger wedding tradition exactly as it would typically happen, they brought the pieces that felt meaningful into their elopement.

They slowed down to make tea together, sharing promises and blessings as they turned the tradition into something that felt completely their own.

And they let the tradition become part of their wedding in a way that felt natural to them.

We freaking LOVE that.

Can You Include Wedding Traditions in an Elopement?

YES!!!

Please do!

Or don’t!

That’s kind of the whole point. 😂

Eloping doesn’t mean you have to toss every wedding tradition into the garbage because you decided not to have a traditional wedding.

Bring the ones you love.

Maybe there’s a cultural tradition that connects you to your heritage. You might have something your family has done for generations that you can’t imagine leaving out. Or maybe you love one tiny piece of a tradition while the rest of it doesn’t feel like you at all.

Take the meaningful part.

Leave what doesn’t fit.

Add something completely new because you feel like it!

Your elopement does not have to fit neatly into anyone else’s definition of what a wedding is supposed to look like.

Patricia and Kenny’s tea ceremony is such a beautiful example of that.

A Drumheller Hoodoos Elopement Picnic

Then we headed to one of Drumheller’s most recognizable landscapes: the Hoodoos!

If Horseshoe Canyon made us feel like we’d landed on another planet, the Hoodoos were absolutely NOT helping Alberta beat the Mars allegations.

These incredible rock formations rise out of the Badlands with layers of sediment running through the landscape around them. They’re weird and ancient-looking and SO freaking cool to photograph.

Patricia and Kenny settled in for a picnic surrounded by the Hoodoos, which meant it was also time for one of our favorite wedding-day activities.

Eating.

VERY important!

Vegan Treats in the Badlands

Patricia and Kenny are vegan, so their picnic included goodies from Canela, one of our favorite vegan bakeries in Calgary.

And because an elopement picnic doesn’t have to be a formal sit-down reception, the whole thing could stay easy and relaxed.

Good food.
Tea.
An absolutely ridiculous landscape.

What else do you need?!

We even sat down and ate with them, and there’s a behind-the-scenes photo of all of us sharing the picnic together that we LOVE.

These are the little parts of elopements that don’t always make it onto the Pinterest board.

Not every minute needs to be a portrait session. You don’t need another activity scheduled every 20 minutes to make your wedding day feel special.

Sometimes you sit down. You eat something delicious, talk about whatever comes up, and take a minute to really soak in where you are.

And maybe you look around for a second and remember that you’re having a picnic in the Alberta Badlands!!!

That’s part of the experience too.

Sunset Elopement Photos in Drumheller

Eventually, the sun started dropping lower over Drumheller.

And OH BOY. 🌅

This landscape knows what to do with sunset.

The warm evening light caught all those layers, textures, and shapes in the Badlands while Patricia and Kenny explored in their traditional attire.

We brought out a lantern as the light disappeared and played around with some more creative photographs. One of our favorites focuses on the landscape behind them while Patricia and Kenny fall softly out of focus in the foreground, with the sunset catching the details in her hair.

UGH. SO GOOD.

By this point, the entire landscape felt completely different from where we’d started earlier that day.

Why Drumheller Is Such a Cool Alberta Elopement Location

Drumheller isn’t Banff without the mountains.

And we don’t think couples should approach it that way!

It’s an entirely different Alberta elopement experience.

Banff gives you turquoise alpine lakes and enormous mountain peaks. Drumheller gives you open prairie, desert-like Badlands, hoodoos, canyons, strange rock formations, and some of the weirdest landscapes in Alberta.

Did we mention we like weird?!
Because we really, really do. 😂

Drumheller is especially fun for couples who want to explore throughout their wedding day. You can move between completely different landscapes, have a picnic somewhere ridiculous, chase the sunset through the Badlands, or incorporate something deeply personal like Patricia and Kenny’s Chinese tea ceremony.

The location gives you a starting point.

What you decide to do with it is where things get interesting.

And if you’re currently comparing Alberta locations and trying to figure out whether the Badlands are actually your place, our How to Elope in Drumheller guide is the next place we’d send you.

Planning Your Own Drumheller Elopement?

If you’ve been looking at Alberta elopement locations and thinking, The mountains are beautiful… but what ELSE have you got?

HELLO, DRUMHELLER!!! 👋🏼

Maybe you love the idea of exchanging vows overlooking the Badlands but couldn’t care less about a picnic. Perhaps you’re already imagining sunset among the Hoodoos, or you have a cultural tradition you want to bring with you and absolutely no clue how it fits into an adventure elopement.

GOOD!!!

You don’t need to show up with a perfectly mapped-out wedding day.

Start with what actually sounds fun.

Keep the traditions you love. Invent a few of your own. Wear the outfit that makes you ridiculously happy. Eat the food you actually want to eat. Bring the meaningful things. Skip the things you’re only doing because weddings are “supposed” to have them.

Then find somewhere that makes you look around and think, HOW is this where we’re getting married?!

If Drumheller is starting to feel like that place, dig into our complete Drumheller elopement planning guide next. Then you can check out our destination elopement photography + video packages to see how we help turn all those scattered ideas into an actual wedding day.

And when your notes app starts filling up with things like ghost town??? tea ceremony??? BADLANDS AT SUNSET???

Yeah.

Come tell us about it!

We want to know what you’re excited about, what matters to you, what traditions you’re keeping, what you’re happily throwing out the window, and what weird little ideas keep making their way back into the conversation.

Because those are usually the things that make an elopement feel like yours.

And if your version happens to involve tea, a thrifted dress, vegan pastries, and a landscape that looks suspiciously like Mars?

EVEN BETTER.

TALK SOON,
LIZ AND JASON