Adventure Instead Elopement Photographer Course Review – Is It Worth the Money?

In the world of elopement photography, Adventure Instead is hugely popular. Some might even have seen them to be at the forefront of this new generation of elopement weddings that have become increasingly popular over the past few years. As we begin to see more couples re-envision their wedding days to be more laid back and self focused through self uniting ceremonies or smaller weddings with the closest friends & family attendance, and not to mention more photogenic as they’re choosing more visually interesting places for their days like National Parks, the abundance of new photographers wanting to learn how to make elopements their niche is on the rise.

The Adventure Instead Elopement Photographer Course is the first comprehensive course for elopement photographers, by elopement photographers. Experiencing a lull in inquiries, we decided to pick up our copy in late 2020 to see what all the hype was about as we regularly look to new education resources to better our photography and business.

Our Background

It’s a little difficult to give a proper review without sharing some things about ourselves, so let’s take a quick detour in that direction. We are established wedding photographers, in business since January 2017, operating out of Northeast Pennsylvania and typically shooting in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and surrounding states.

By most accounts, we’d be considered “successful” (even prior to purchasing this course) as we have consistently had relatively high incomes thanks to our photography business, do this as our full time jobs, and frankly have had a good time at pretty much every wedding and session we’ve photographed over the year. Our journey hasn’t been without it’s ups-and-downs, but it’s been a positive thing for our lives without a doubt!

Back in 2020, we began offering small elopements in Pennsylvania, and had quite a few great couples hire us for these. They were extremely exciting for us because we got to merge our love for getting outdoors and hiking with photographing couples in love. In many instances, we also ended up being there as the only witnesses, signing our couple’s marriage certificates (which is a particularly unique experience being in PA, one of the few states that allows a “self uniting marriage” as it’s called).

These small experiences opened our eyes to what could be possible with elopements, and since then we’ve gone on to book some full day elopement experiences in our region.

We do not fully intend to ever go 100% elopements, as we like “regular” weddings just as much and have great relationships with some venues in our area. But as an alternative option that we can pick up at prices mirroring our full day weddings? Yes please!

We purchased the Adventure Instead Elopement Photographer Course for this reason – to grow our knowledge and expertise in an area we were already dabbling in, but wanted to know inside and out.

Adventure Instead Elopement Course Review – High Level Expectations

Considering the course is a ~$2,000 investment (it can vary as sometimes its less when they run a sale), it’s not exactly a “cheap” purchase. As an investment in professional career development, this is a popular price point – especially in the higher end photography and photo business course world as there are many other photographers putting together courses at a similar price point (Ben Hartley being another example).

With that said, deciding to invest in a course like this definitely takes a little more effort than shelling out $20 bucks – and for good reason. For most people, that’s not a small investment.

For us – our expectations were set by the landing page for the course seen here and through countless posts seen on Facebook in the Weddings & Wanderlust – Adventure Photographers group that has made this course so popular. This is a group with ~22,000 members and run by Adventure Instead.

Our expectations were as follows:

• The course would have a lot of content that would be applicable to “traditional” weddings (as we had no intention of leaving them behind 100% of the time) – this is an expectation that was confirmed by multiple group members including Adventure Instead’s Maddie Mae.
• We’d be able to book more higher paying elopements at rates comparable to our traditional wedding pricing.
• We’d be able to better attract our “ideal clients” – those couples who want to pay our prices, who are excited to work with us, and match our “vibe”

What’s Included in the Adventure Instead Elopement Course?

The Elopement Course is comprised of 4 main sections that cover a wide range of topics. These sections are:

• How to Create an Irresistable Elopement Brand
• How to Get Elopement Inquiries
• How to Turn Elopement Inquiries Into Full Price Bookings
• How to Create Unforgettable Elopement Experiences & Get Rave Reviews

While there is a lot covered in this course, some of the key topics include…

• Branding and marketing
• Pricing
• Building your portfolio
• Optimizing your website
• SEO
• How to effectively use Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook Ads
• Handling emails and phone calls
• Workflows

Each section is broken out into different modules that take you step-by-step with video guidance. Most sections also include extras (like email templates) that support the learning process.

Our Experience After Going Through The Adventure Instead Elopement Course

Initially, we were very excited to start working through the course. There is a lot to take in, and you will need to dedicate a good amount of time to work through it all.

Certainly, if this is your first exposure to a lot of business concepts talked about in it, you will find this to be an invaluable resource that is personally tailored to the career path you are envisioning for yourself as an elopement photographer.

Given our experience in the wedding industry, and having taken other courses, the results for us were pretty lackluster. Here’s a few reasons why:

• We had previously purchased a course by Hustle & Flow for $99 that covered the same topics, just more broadly for weddings in general, not specifically niched down to elopements. As a result, in our case at least, there was very little that was actually new for us – and that set us up to not really make much progress with our business as a result. Paying $2,000 for content that covers much the same as we learned for $99 does sting a bit.
  
• The application of the information is…not the best…for more traditional weddings. Sure, you can follow the exercises for putting together your client personas and fill it in with a couple that would be having a traditional wedding day, but all of the content is geared towards elopements. In some cases, conversation about elopements also talks about why they are so much more preferable to regular wedding days, that it made it very frustrating at points since our goal from the start was to continue with traditional weddings.

With this said, there have been a few things that we revisited and made adjustments to in our workflows and on our website (in particular) that we feel more confident in since taking this course.

Is it Worth the Money? Your Results May Vary

It is easy to see that we just were not the right fit for this course.

For us, no – it was not worth the investment.

If you are a beginner in weddings or elopements, or are specifically looking to be an elopement photographer exclusively – this course has an abundance of valuable content and would very likely be worth the cost for you.

There are many raving reviews online (particularly in Facebook groups) that can attest to it’s value.

With that said, if you are in a similar position to us with an already established business – it may not be worth the investment unless you are trying to get out of traditional weddings entirely. Even then, if you’re already familiar with a lot of key business concepts, it may just feel like hearing the same things you’ve already learned (and probably applied) before.