A Two-Person Elopement at Timber Cove Resort

The Cliffs and the Coastline After a Timber Cove Elopement

With no family photos to run, the time after the ceremony was theirs. They raised a champagne toast on the cove, then wandered the coastline for portraits as the sun dropped toward the water. This is Salt Point country, the sandstone here is known for its tafoni, the honeycomb pitting the salt air and sea spray carve into the rock over years, and the two of them stood against it while the light went gold. A Sonoma Coast cliff elopement earns its setting in the late afternoon, when the rock changes color and the water goes silver.

The coastline north of Jenner toward Salt Point runs in a series of coves and headlands with very little between the road and the edge of the bluff. In October the afternoon light arrives at a low angle across the water, and the tafoni surfaces catch it differently from the smooth stone, all of that texture and color in the frame while Leakna and Thomas moved through the portraits together, unhurried, no one else on the rocks.

Cake at Timber Cove, Then Dinner for Two

Back at Timber Cove, they cut a small round cake from Patisserie Angelica, Tahitian vanilla bean with raspberries, topped with a little figure of their dog, Coco, standing in for the family member who couldn't make the drive. It was the two of them cutting it, one slice each.

Then they left for dinner at the resort's coast-side restaurant, a table for two at the end of a day built for two, the water going dark past the glass.