A Solar Eclipse Elopement in Iceland | Chey & Joe

There was one thing none of us could control. The clouds.

Chey and Joe had chosen August 12, 2026, for their elopement in Snæfellsnes, the day a total solar eclipse would cross Iceland.

We had planned for the traffic. We had planned the route. We had backup locations, decision points, weather checks and enough time built into the day that we wouldn't need to rush simply because thousands of other people were heading towards the same part of Iceland.

What I couldn't plan was whether the sky would actually let us see the eclipse.

It didn't.

Cloud cover over Snæfellsnes completely hid it in the areas you were supposed to see it in Iceland

And somehow, that didn't end up being the part of the story any of us will remember most.

Because while Jökull was standing with Chey and Joe during their Ásatrú ceremony, he reached the moment when he pronounced them husband and wife.

And right then, the deepest part of the darkness arrived. The eclipse itself was hidden somewhere above the clouds. But the daylight disappeared.

Chey and Joe became husband and wife as Iceland went dark around them.

For them, that became the most memorable moment of the entire day. They might not have seen the eclipse.

But I can't think of a more epic way for them to have gotten married.

Planning an Elopement on Iceland's Solar Eclipse Day

This wasn't an elopement day where I could simply look at Google Maps in the morning and decide we'd drive somewhere else if the weather changed.

August 12 required a different kind of planning.

Traffic controls around Snæfellsnes were due to begin in the morning. Parts of the road system would operate differently, parking would be limited, and thousands and thousands of people would be moving towards the eclipse path.

So before the elopement day, I built an operational plan specifically around getting Chey and Joe where they needed to be without allowing all of that logistics work to become their problem.

The primary plan was simple from their perspective.

I would collect them from Fosshótel Stykkishólmur; we would travel to Ytri-Rauðarmelskúla, Jökull would lead their ceremony, and we would experience totality there before deciding what made sense afterwards.

Behind that simple plan was rather more happening.

The route strategy accounted for traffic restrictions, parking rules and at least an hour of contingency around driving. By the afternoon, the plan was specifically not to chase locations. Once we committed to the ceremony region, we would stay there rather than spend the final hours before the eclipse sitting in traffic hoping somewhere else might be better.

That decision became especially important once we knew what the clouds were doing.

The Plan Was Never to Chase the Eclipse at the Expense of Their Elopement

Of course we wanted Chey and Joe to see the eclipse.

I had prepared for photographing it too, with eclipse glasses, solar filters and camera settings worked out before the day.

But there was a point where chasing a patch of clearer sky would have meant turning their wedding into a weather pursuit.

That wasn't what I wanted for them.

The weather plan allowed for an earlier change if the forecast gave us a genuinely better option. What I didn't want was a last-minute relocation during the final hour because there happened to be a tiny break in the clouds somewhere else.

They were still getting married. That had to remain the centre of the day.

So we committed. And we let Iceland do whatever Iceland was going to do.

An Ásatrú Wedding Ceremony During the Solar Eclipse

Chey and Joe's ceremony was led by Jökull in the Ásatrú tradition.

We had deliberately built quiet time around the ceremony rather than treating it as something that needed to happen quickly before the eclipse arrived. The original plan was for their ceremony to end immediately before totality, leaving them free to stop and experience what was happening around them.

But a timetable is one thing. Standing there while it's actually happening is another.

Above us, the eclipse was underway. We just couldn't see it. The sky remained completely covered in cloud as the ceremony continued.

Jökull spoke. Chey and Joe exchanged their vows.

And then he pronounced them husband and wife. That was when the deepest darkness arrived.

Suddenly, the light disappeared from the landscape around us. There was no visible ring around the moon. No clear view of the sun disappearing behind it. The clouds had taken that possibility away.

Instead, Chey and Joe stood there as newlyweds while Iceland went dark.

And when we talked about it afterwards, that was the moment that stayed with them most.

Being pronounced husband and wife just as the biggest part of the darkness arrived.

They hadn't been able to watch the eclipse. But they had felt it happen around them.

Sometimes the Backup Plan Is Staying Exactly Where You Are

There is a temptation when you're planning something around a natural event to believe success means seeing exactly what you came for.

This day was a pretty good reminder that it doesn't.

Could we have spent the afternoon chasing weather forecasts and trying to find a hole in the clouds? Possibly. Would that have made Chey and Joe's wedding better? I'm not convinced it would have.

One of the rules I'd written into my operational plan before the day was:

Never sacrifice the experience for another location.

That rule wasn't really about photography. It was about knowing when enough planning has been done.

There comes a point when my job stops being finding one more option and becomes giving a couple the space to stop thinking about logistics altogether.

They were in the right place. Jökull was there. They were getting married. So we stayed. And Iceland gave them something none of us could have put into a timetable anyway.

From Totality to Selvallafoss

Once the light began to return, the elopement day wasn't finished. But neither did we need to race onwards simply because another location had been written into the plan.

Selvallafoss had always been our secondary portrait location, and the rule was simple: we would only go if traffic and timing still made it comfortable. Otherwise, we would stay around the ceremony area.

This time, it worked. We made it to Selvallafoss.

After the strange darkness of the ceremony, Chey and Joe got some time to explore together and have their wedding portraits taken, surrounded by another part of Snæfellsnes.

And then I took them back to Fosshótel Stykkishólmur. Their part of the logistics was over.

Mine... Not quite. 😄 One of the less glamorous parts of planning an elopement during a total solar eclipse is remembering that once the eclipse is over, everybody else wants to leave too.

The return strategy had accounted for exactly that possibility. The plan was to remain flexible and, if necessary, delay the journey rather than immediately joining peak outbound traffic.

Chey and Joe, however, were safely back at their hotel. I eventually found myself in what I can only describe as one of the worst traffic jams I've ever experienced in Iceland.

And that's exactly where I wanted the traffic jam to be. With me. Not with two people who had just gotten married.

They didn't need to spend the final part of their elopement day worrying about road closures, traffic forecasts or how long it was going to take me to get back to Reykjavík.

They got to go back to their hotel as newlyweds. I dealt with the rest.

What I'll Remember About Chey & Joe's Solar Eclipse Elopement

I spent a lot of time preparing for August 12.

Weather forecasts. Road restrictions. Parking. Traffic. Camera filters. Communication plans. Backup locations. What we'd do if the clouds moved and what we'd do if they didn't. The operational plan even accounted for mobile networks becoming unreliable and included offline maps because of the number of people expected in Snæfellsnes that day.

All of that planning mattered.

It meant Chey and Joe didn't have to carry those decisions themselves.

But none of it created the moment I'll remember most. The sky did that part. Jökull pronounced them husband and wife. The deepest darkness of the eclipse arrived. And for a few extraordinary minutes, Iceland disappeared into shadow around two people who had just gotten married.

They didn't get the clear eclipse we'd hoped for.

They got their eclipse.

And according to Chey and Joe, it was the most epic way they could have gotten married.