Arches National Park Bridals

November 5, 2024

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post of my recent sessions, but this one was one I really wanted to share as it was a little difficult to find advice online. Things like WHERE to shoot a bridal session was scarce on the internet/Pinterest, so I hope this post will help at least one person who has not been to Arches National Park, let alone, been to southern Utah.

How I planned the timing of the bridal session

For starters, I’m from Utah, and the number of National Parks we have here are incredible. When it comes to the red rocks, I would say planning a trip during the Spring or Fall. April, May, September, October to be specific. It gets hot in the summer in Southern Utah.

In order to get sunrise and sunset times, I check the weather app in the exact city of where I want to shoot. In this case, we wanted to do a sunrise shoot in order to avoid crowds as Arches has become very popular as of recent. I chose a time that was a half hour before sunrise in order to give us plenty of time. If I were to do it over again, I would only do 15 minutes beforehand (no clouds). The way the sun rose was much slower, meaning, the rocks blocked a lot of the sun rise until about a half hour after sunrise. So for example, sunrise time was 7:05am, so we would want to get to our location at 6:25am, which we did, but could have delayed it by 15 minutes or so.

Location

As for bridals, we took these shots at Double O Arch. You can Google it for directions. There is very little walking needed (like 3 minutes) and not a lot of hiking, unless you want to get some shots of the Bride and Groom on the bigger rocks.

I recommend downloading an offline map of the area/Moab before heading on over. You might lose cell service.

We took these photos in mid-September. Which was PERFECT. I can’t vouche for the weather always being perfect, but it felt like mid-60s and 70s while we were shooting. During the day, it got up to the mid-80s.

Note: My parents went to Arches the following month and got insane wind…so I can’t say the weather will always be perfect, but that mid-September time was so perfect for us!

Know ahead of time

Really, the only thing you need to know in advance is the fact you need to reserve a slot to enter into the park. You can do it online here. When you check the site, it’ll also inform you of park closure dates.

Since we went so early in the morning, no one was there to check our pass. It was a Saturday morning. In addition, there was about four people hiking the location we chose, they weren’t really in the way, as are most people when they see a Bride and Groom all done up for a photoshoot.

My unsolicited advice

Morning light is the best in order to beat the crowds! Call the park in advance if you’re really needing some extra assurance. Literally everything above is what helped make the session go incredibly smoothly. Shout out to the couple who had me take their photos…it was a REALLY early morning. Would I do it again? YES and YES!