How to elope in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Two things are actually required. Everything else is a choice. You need a West Virginia marriage license, which costs $56, has no waiting period, and stays good for 60 days. And if you want your ceremony inside the national park, you need a $50 special use permit for the one lawn the park allows weddings on. That last part surprises people, because it is not the overlook every other guide sends you to. Here is the permit situation in plain terms, the places around town where you can actually stand and say vows, what each season is really like, and how to keep strangers out of the back of your photographs.

Photo: Nicolas Raymond, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Can you get married in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park?

Yes, at one location. The park designates a single site for wedding ceremonies: the lawn at Wirth Hall, which most people now know as the Mather Training Center, at 51 Mather Place. That is the entire list.

The Point is not on it. That is the spot where the Potomac and the Shenandoah run together and you can stand in one state looking at two others, and it is the picture on the front of almost every Harpers Ferry elopement guide on the internet, including the one I used to have here. It is a wonderful place to walk to after you are married. It is not a place the park will permit you to hold a ceremony. Maryland Heights is not either.

What the permit involves:

• A $50 non-refundable special use permit, payable to the National Park Service.
• Applications go through the park Permits Office at 304-535-6232. Start early rather than late. The park's own wedding ceremony page is the authority here and worth reading before you call.
• Acoustic music is fine. Sound systems are not, because the lawn sits in a residential part of town.
• There are no public restrooms and no electricity at the site. Plan the day around that, particularly if anyone in your group needs to change.
• There are two parking areas, and the Blue Ridge sits behind you.

One more option inside the park boundary: St. Peter's Catholic Church, the stone church partway up the hill. It books independently of the park at 304-725-5558, and the park asks to be told about parking arrangements.

Where else can you get married around Harpers Ferry?

Most couples who tell me they want to elope in Harpers Ferry do not actually need to be inside the park boundary. They want the rivers, the ridges, and a short guest list. There is more of that outside the permit system than in it.

I have split this into two lists on purpose. The first is places I have worked. The second is places that are real, take small weddings, and are worth your time, but where I am telling you what exists rather than what I know from standing in it.

Places I have photographed

Harpers Ferry Brewing sits on the hill above the Potomac, looking back at the town. I photographed Annie and Thomas's wedding here in July: ceremony under the timber pergola, which frames the bend of the river straight down its middle, then dinner and dancing on the lawn and inside. Everything happens on one property, so nobody spends the afternoon in a car, and there is a stone overlook wall at the edge that does a great deal of work for portraits.

Hillbrook Inn is over in Charles Town, minutes from Harpers Ferry. A historic inn on its own grounds, and one of my favourite places around here to photograph a wedding. They have a separate cottage set up for elopements, which is about as close as this area gets to a turnkey small-wedding day.

Other places that take small weddings

River Chase, nine acres on the Potomac with an 1870s barn, a lawn running out toward the Blue Ridge, and rooms to get ready in. Central enough that guests coming from DC or Baltimore are not making a day of the drive.

Lily Garden Bed & Breakfast, in the historic district on Washington Street. Small, private, and set up specifically for elopements and the kind of wedding where the guest list fits around one table.

The Quarry, which is exactly what it sounds like: stone cliffs around green water and a sand beach, on the edge of town. It takes around fifty seated, more under a tent.

The original Hill Top House. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Hill Top House Gap Overlook. Worth correcting, because the old version of this guide had it wrong and so does most of what you will find online. The Hill Top House Hotel is not open. It has been in redevelopment for years and there is still no hotel to book. What did happen is better than nothing: the owners opened pedestrian access to the promontory overlook, free, dawn to dusk, from the corner of Columbia and Washington Streets. It looks straight into the gap where the two rivers meet and three states touch. For vows with a handful of people, or for portraits, it is one of the best views in town and it costs nothing.

Weaverton Cliffs, across the river on the Maryland side, the overlook above the water gap. I have photographed a session up on those rocks through sunset. It is a real hike in real shoes, not a stroll, and it earns what it asks. If an overlook ceremony is the plan, the thing to think through in advance is not the view. It is where anybody older or less steady is going to wait, and how long the walk back down takes in the dark.

What about renting a house?

This is a good idea and I would not send you to a specific listing. Short-term rentals come and go, and a guide that points at one from two years ago is worse than useless. Search the area yourself, and when you find somewhere, ask the host directly whether a ceremony on the property is allowed before you book. Plenty say yes. Some very much do not, and finding that out afterward is a bad afternoon.

What a rented house buys you is the thing the park cannot: nobody watching, no permit, no clock. If a private ceremony is the entire point, that is the shortest path to it. The same is true of the small inns above, with the added advantage that they have done this before.

If you are looking a little wider, I also photograph weddings around Shepherdstown, Frederick, and out into the Shenandoah Valley, all within about an hour.

What do you need for a West Virginia marriage license?

Both of you, in person, at a county clerk's office. Harpers Ferry sits in Jefferson County, so that is where most couples getting married here apply. The Jefferson County Clerk lists current hours and requirements.

• $56, or $36 if you have finished a four-hour premarital education course within the past year. A county or two lists it a dollar higher, so confirm when you call.
• No waiting period if you are both 18 or over. The license works the moment it is issued.
• Valid for 60 days.
• Bring a government photo ID and your Social Security number.
• Your officiant can be a professional, or a friend who gets ordained and registers with the state. Sort the registering part well before the day, not the week of.

If you live out of state, apply at whichever clerk's office is most convenient to where you are getting married. There is no residency requirement to work around.

When should you elope in Harpers Ferry?

The honest answer is that the town has two variables, weather and crowds, and they move in opposite directions. The nicest weather brings the most people.

Fall

The best of it, and everybody knows. Temperatures drop into hiking range, the ridges turn over through October, and the light gets longer and lower every week. It is also when the town is busiest. If you want fall and you want privacy, take a Tuesday.

Spring

My quiet favourite. It rains more, which people treat as a problem and which I mostly do not, and the hills come back green before the summer crowds arrive. Late March through May gives you comfortable temperatures without August's queue at every overlook.

Summer

Hot and humid, and the busiest stretch of the year. It is entirely workable, but it wants planning: get married early or late in the day, stay near the water, and do not schedule anything strenuous across the middle of the afternoon. Annie and Thomas married here in July and it was a wonderful day. It was also July.

Winter

Cold, and almost empty. If having the place to yourselves matters more than being comfortable, this is the trade. Bare trees open up views that are hidden the rest of the year, and a light snow on the stone town is genuinely something. Bring more layers than you think and keep the outdoor part short.

How do you keep an audience out of your ceremony?

This is the question I get most and it has three answers, in order of how much they help.

Get married on a weekday. Nothing else you do comes close. A Tuesday in October is quieter than a Saturday in February.

Get married at sunrise. Almost nobody is out. The town is yours in a way it never is again, and the walk back down to breakfast afterward is a lovely part of the day in its own right.

Pick a private property. If the ceremony being unobserved is the whole point, a rented house or a small inn removes the problem rather than managing it.

Sunset is the one people ask for and it is the busiest of the good options. It still works, and it is quieter than the middle of the day, but it is not private.

What do you do after you get married?

This is the part nobody plans and everybody remembers. An elopement leaves you with an entire day and no reception to run, which is the whole advantage, and it is worth deciding in advance how you want to spend it rather than standing in the parking lot working it out.

Get on the river. River & Trail Outfitters and River Riders both run tubing and rafting on the Shenandoah and the Potomac, and River Riders adds zip lines and kayaks. Floating down a river in the afternoon you got married is a better story than a receiving line.

Walk the Appalachian Trail. The AT runs straight through town, within a quarter mile of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters, which is the psychological midpoint of the whole trail and where thru-hikers stop to have their photo taken. Head south out of town and the trail climbs a wooded ridge above the Shenandoah past Jefferson Rock, which looks out over both rivers. It is a short walk to a very good view.

Go to The Point. You cannot hold a ceremony there, but you can absolutely walk down and stand in it married. Two rivers meeting, three states in one view, ten minutes from almost anywhere in town.

Photo: Acroterion, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Walk the old town. Lower High Street is a few hundred yards of brick and stone shopfronts running down toward the water, and it is genuinely lovely late in the day once the day trippers thin out. John Brown's Fort is right there too, which is the single most photographed building in the state and the reason most people have heard of the town at all.

Eat something. The town is small enough that dinner is a short walk from wherever you are. The Rabbit Hole looks out over the rivers and the train station. The Anvil has been there a long time and is known for crab cakes.

If you are picturing a bigger version of this, with a handful of people and a proper dinner, that is a small wedding rather than an elopement and I photograph plenty of them. There is more about how those days actually run on the small weddings page.

What does eloping in Harpers Ferry cost?

Elopement packages start at $2,500, and travel is included across DC, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Harpers Ferry is about twenty minutes from my house, so nothing about getting here costs you anything extra. What a package covers, how payment works, and when your gallery lands are all on the pricing page, and there is a longer piece on what wedding photography actually costs and why if you want the reasoning rather than the number.

Beyond photography the real numbers are small: $56 for the license, $50 if you want the park permit, and whatever a place to sleep costs. Compared to almost anything else with the word wedding attached to it, eloping here is cheap.

Two other things couples ask me about at this stage, both of which have their own answers: how long the photographs actually take, which is less than most timelines assume, and what a second location really costs you if you are thinking about a ceremony in one place and dinner in another.

Why I keep coming back here

Harpers Ferry is twenty minutes up the road from Shepherdstown, where I live, and it is the closest thing I have to a home venue that is not my own town. Two rivers, a stone town stacked up a hillside, and overlooks that do half the work before I have taken a frame.

What I will not do is turn up with the light already decided. I plan for it, then read what the day is actually doing and build around what is there. Some of the best frames I have from that hill came out of weather nobody had planned for.

If you are weighing Harpers Ferry against somewhere else, or trying to work out whether an overlook ceremony or a courthouse-and-trail day suits you better, I am glad to talk it through before you commit to anything. There is more on photographing weddings in Harpers Ferry, and when you are ready, send me your date, even if half of it is still a guess.

Common questions

Can you get married in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park?

Yes, but at one site only. The park designates the lawn at Wirth Hall, now known as the Mather Training Center, at 51 Mather Place. A $50 non-refundable special use permit is required through the park Permits Office at 304-535-6232. The Point and Maryland Heights are not approved ceremony locations.

How much is a marriage license in West Virginia?

The fee is $56, or $36 if you have completed a four-hour premarital education course within the past year. Some counties list it a dollar higher. Harpers Ferry is in Jefferson County, so most couples apply at the Jefferson County Clerk.

Is there a waiting period to get married in West Virginia?

No, not if you are both 18 or older. The license is effective as soon as it is issued and stays valid for 60 days. Applicants under 18 face a two-day wait after filing.

Can you have music at a Harpers Ferry park ceremony?

Acoustic music is permitted. Sound systems are not, because the approved ceremony lawn sits in a residential part of town. There are also no public restrooms and no electricity at the site.

When is the best time to elope in Harpers Ferry?

October is the strongest combination of comfortable temperatures and colour, but it is also the busiest. For privacy, a weekday in late winter or early spring at sunrise will give you the town almost to yourself.

How much does elopement photography cost in Harpers Ferry?

Elopement coverage starts at $2,500, with travel included across DC, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Harpers Ferry is about twenty minutes from my home in Shepherdstown.