What Makes Asheville Such a Remarkable Place to Get Married
By Sean Szitas, Asheville Wedding Photographer
I have photographed weddings in a lot of different places. Mountain towns, beach towns, big city rooftops, vineyard estates, and quiet courthouse steps. Every location has something to offer, and every couple brings a reason I believe in what I do. But there is something specific that happens at Asheville weddings that I do not experience in quite the same way anywhere else.
It is not just that the mountains are beautiful, though they are. It is not just that the venues here tend to have genuine character, though they do. It is something harder to name. A quality in the couples who choose this city. An openness, a willingness to let the day be what it actually is rather than what they imagined it would be at the beginning of their engagement. Asheville has a way of attracting people who are present. And as a photographer, that makes all the difference.
The Light Here Is Different
I am going to lead with something that might sound overly technical for a love story, but bear with me because it matters.
The light in Asheville, specifically in the mountains surrounding the city, has a quality I have not encountered in many other places. It has to do with elevation, with the way the ridgelines break the horizon line in every direction, and with the atmospheric haze that settles into the valleys on warm evenings and catches the last light of the day in the most extraordinary way.
When you are on the rooftop at Highland Brewing or standing in a meadow at one of the farms just outside the city and the sun drops below a ridgeline and sends this diffused, honey-colored light bouncing up off the valley fog below you, the photos that happen in those minutes are genuinely unlike what I can produce anywhere else. It is one of the reasons I chose to live and work here.
Late September through November, when the foliage turns and the air gets that first bite of cold, the light becomes even more dramatic. The mountain backdrop shifts from green to gold to deep amber and the quality of the photos from fall Asheville weddings is something I am consistently proud of in a way that is particular to this season and this place.
The Couples Who Come Here
Asheville wedding couples are a specific kind of people, and I mean that as the highest compliment.
They tend to be thoughtful about their choices. They picked this city because it means something to them, whether they have a personal connection to the mountains, or they have been wanting an excuse to introduce their friends to Asheville’s food and art scene, or they just knew that a ballroom wedding was never going to feel like them and they needed something with more texture.
They tend to care about their guests’ experience in a way that goes beyond the centerpieces. I have seen couples put together neighborhood guides for their wedding weekend, host pre-wedding hikes up to overlooks that meant something to them personally, and organize post-wedding brunches at their favorite local spots with the energy of people who genuinely wanted their people to fall in love with their city the way they did.
And they tend to be willing to let go a little. To trust that the day will be what it will be and that what they can control is their presence in it. That is not unique to Asheville couples, but it shows up here with a consistency that I have noticed across years of working in this city.
Those are the conditions under which documentary wedding photography works best. Presence, trust, and genuine emotion rather than performance. Asheville couples give me that more reliably than almost anywhere else I work.
The Venues Have Actual Character
I could fill a whole separate post talking about specific venues in Asheville, and I do, but the thing worth saying here is that the venue landscape in this city is genuinely unusual.
Most wedding markets are dominated by one or two styles: the event hall that works for anything but excels at nothing, or the barn that every venue in a fifty-mile radius is trying to replicate. Asheville has those options too, but it also has a genuine range of distinct personalities.
You can get married in a century-old craft brewery with mountain views from the rooftop. You can get married in a converted barn with dried flower installations and a skylight above the ceremony space. You can get married on the grounds of one of the most iconic Gilded Age estates in America. You can get married in a minimalist downtown courtyard that looks like somewhere in Barcelona, or in an open meadow at a working farm where the mountains are the only backdrop you need, or in a vineyard with the Blue Ridge rolling out behind you.
Each of these venues attracts a slightly different kind of couple, and each one creates a completely different gallery. That variety is one of the things that keeps the work interesting year after year.
The City Itself Is Part of the Wedding
This is something that not every wedding destination can offer, and Asheville does it exceptionally well.
When couples have out-of-town guests coming in for a wedding in Asheville, those guests do not sit in their hotel rooms. They go to the River Arts District and wander through studios where working artists are throwing pots and painting large-scale pieces in open view. They eat at restaurants that are doing things with Southern Appalachian ingredients that would draw attention in New York or Los Angeles. They hike. They discover that the craft beer scene here is not just Highland but dozens of breweries across the city, and that there are natural wine bars and amaro-focused cocktail programs and everything in between.
What this means for the wedding is that the celebration does not start and end on one day. It builds over a weekend. By the time your guests sit down for the ceremony on Saturday afternoon, they have already spent forty-eight hours falling in love with the city, which puts them in the best possible emotional state to celebrate you.
That extended warmth shows up in the reception photos every time. The dancing is looser. The toasts are more real. The late-night moments on the dance floor have a kind of abandon that comes from a room full of people who are genuinely, completely happy.
What I Want Couples to Know Before They Book
I have been photographing weddings in Asheville for years, and I have some strong convictions about what makes a great experience.
Book your photographer and your venue early, especially for fall. I cannot overstate how quickly fall dates book up here. If you are considering October, start conversations with photographers and venues in winter or early spring of the preceding year.
Give yourself and your photographer time on the property. The venues in Asheville almost all have multiple distinct spaces and some genuinely beautiful unexpected corners that you will only find if you slow down and explore. The best photos from any Asheville wedding I have shot came from moments when the couple and I had a few unscheduled minutes to just wander.
Be honest with yourself about what you want the day to feel like. Asheville is good at helping couples find venues that match their actual aesthetic rather than the wedding aesthetic they thought they were supposed to want. If you show up knowing that you want something industrial and laid-back, there is a perfect venue here for you. If you want grandeur and formality, the Biltmore exists for exactly that reason. The city accommodates a genuinely wide range of visions. Your job is knowing yours.
Lean into the season. Whatever time of year you get married here, there is something specific and beautiful about that time in the mountains, and the best Asheville weddings lean into it. Embrace the rooftop in October even if the weather feels uncertain. Plan for that golden hour portrait session in the meadow even if your schedule feels tight. The things that feel specific to where and when you are always produce the best photos.
I Would to be your Asheville Wedding Photographer
If any of this resonates with you and you are starting to think about what your wedding day in Asheville could look and feel like, I would genuinely love to hear from you.
My approach is documentary at its core. I photograph what is actually happening, the real moments, the in-between ones, the ones you will not remember having until you see the photo years from now. I work with color and natural light and I am not going to ask you to hold poses for longer than you are comfortable. What I am going to do is show up fully, stay curious, and make sure your gallery tells the real story of your day.
Sean Szitas Photography | Asheville Wedding Photographer | seanszitasphotography.com
More from the blog:
Leave a Reply
