Amore borealis: Have a ceremony lit up by the northern lights

It sounds like a dream — trading vows as the skies dance behind you in hues of green and purple — but in recent years, as astrotourism has gone from a niche interest to public obsession, the mystical northern lights wedding has made its way to reality.

One of 2025’s biggest travel trends, according to Booking.com, is “noctourism,” with nearly two-thirds of travelers seeking dark skies.

The aurora borealis, or northern lights, are ribbons of color that occur with the interaction of charged solar particles and the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Last year, they were the most active they’ve been in two decades, even making a rare appearance in some of the Lower 48 states.

Norwegian elopement planner Tanja Skoglund of TS Foto Design added northern lights weddings to her repertoire in 2022, at the suggestion of her ex-husband. “I live in Alta, a town in the arctic which is locally known as nordlysbyen,” or “the northern lights town,” she said. With minimal light pollution, in Alta the lights are visible from late September to early April.

Rates run from $6,200 to $9,300, and Skoglund helps clients with anything from suggestions of where to eat to where to go reindeer sledding. But her main job is getting the money shot under the aurora, and she has gone to extreme lengths to procure it.

Like the time in February 2023 when she drove her clients through a blizzard toward clearer skies in Finland. She called it one of the scariest drives of her life.

“It was a full whiteout, and we were super lucky that the roads didn’t close,” she said. “But finally, the snow was gone. Can you imagine the joy of the couple, seeing the aurora borealis for the first time in their lives, on their wedding night? That was totally worth it.”

There are, for sure, cushy ways to have the aurora wedding experience. Book a wedding at Alyeska Resort in Girdwood, Alaska (from $233 a night), and have their aurora concierge give you a northern lights wake-up call.

Or take a cruise in the Norwegian fjords on Hurtigruten or Havila cruise lines and have your nuptials onboard. Both lines have northern lights promises during certain seasons, offering comped trips if you come up empty-handed.

Because of their flighty nature, northern lights weddings tend to be elopements. That’s also better for the photographer — dealing solely with a couple allows photographers like Ambre Peyrotty, with her company Zephyr & Luna, to be adaptable when chasing the lights in countries like Finland and Sweden. (Costs begin at $9,900.)

For her, if there are more than two people involved, things get tricky, and “it kind of gets annoying for the couple,” she said. “I want them to be as free as possible. Obviously, if you want to have the northern lights, you have to be open to do the ceremony pretty late in the day. Guests have to be very open-minded.”

Everyone also has to be aware that it can get very cold. “I always carry hand and feet warmers because I do have crazy brides that want to wear their dress with nothing [else],” she said.

In Fairbanks, Alaska, the temperatures are so cold that iPhones give up, said ordained minister Elise Miller of Golden Heart Weddings. “We have a photographer who has special equipment for extreme cold, because usually it’s well below zero when we’re going out there and doing this,” said Miller. “Electronic equipment hates the cold.”

Demand led Miller to begin offering aurora weddings. “We kept getting calls and emails from couples asking, ‘Do you do this?’  ” she said.

Thus, their aurora borealis adventure wedding package was launched in 2022, with prices starting at $5,434.

For Miller’s weddings, the more guests the merrier — the largest so far has been 30 people. The couple chooses one desired location from a list and for seven nights, Golden Heart Weddings staff are on call.

Each day, they check both the weather and the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute aurora forecast. They consult with the couple once they know how active the aurora is and the chances of actual visibility (it’s hard to see the lights through a blizzard, for example).

The couple then makes the call on whether they want to try for that night, or wait. But the catch is they only get one shot at it. Any additional nights will run you $2,612.50 per half hour.

The couple might wear head lamps to be seen by the camera in the darkness. If she wishes, the bride can hold silk flowers. (Real ones would perish in the cold.) Miller is the officiant.

“I’ll go out there in my parka, my mukluks and my arctic gear, and I’ll perform the ceremony,” she said, noting that “we have to hold exceptionally still as the photographer moves around us. It’s almost like old-timey photography, to get those perfect shots.”