Coastal Maine Wedding at Grey Havens Inn in Georgetown, Maine | Emily + Caleb's Late-Summer Coastal Day

Apr 21
7 min read

If you're venue-hunting in midcoast Maine and you want a place that actually feels like quintessential Maine, you’re probably already circling Grey Havens Inn. And if you aren't...where have you been?!

photojournalistic bride and groom portrait on the coast at grey havens inn in georgetown, maine

Grey Havens Inn is a 1904 shingle-style inn perched on a high craggy bluff on Georgetown Island, looking out over Harmon's Harbor to the tree-covered islands and the open Atlantic beyond. The locals call it the castle-by-the-sea because of the two big round turrets. It's about an hour from Portland Jetport, or two-and-a-half from Boston.

We filmed and photographed Emily and Caleb's wedding here on a classic September Saturday…golden light, no wind, and 60 of their closest people. Their wedding was the perfect blend of candid wedding photography with so many raw and unposed moments, and directed photos that gave them those classic, timeless wedding photos without feeling stiff.

It was perhaps one of our favorite weddings of the season, so we wanted to share what package Emily and Caleb booked with us, what it’s like to get married at Grey Havens Inn, what couples researching the venue tend to ask, and what Emily and Caleb's day looked like inside it.

https://vimeo.com/1184445847

Emily + Caleb's Highlight Film

Emily and Caleb booked our most popular package, "The Galaxy" Package for both photography and videography.

This packaged included:

8 hours of coverage for both photo and video
1 Videographer + 1 Photographer (Bonnie and Jon)
Sneak peek photos and videos within 1 week of their wedding
A 6-8 minute Highlight Film
Full Ceremony + Toast Edit
All RAW Footage
500 - 800 guaranteed edited images
Discounted Engagement Session

They also added on Rehearsal Dinner/Welcome Party videography coverage, which was able to capture some of their VIP's toasts the evening before the wedding! To see our current pricing and inclusions for our most popular package, head over to our "ENCOUNTER" page.

It's not a venue with an inn attached. It's an inn that happens to host weddings.

This distinction matters, and it's the first thing we tell couples. Grey Havens is a working boutique inn first. Weddings are part of what they do, and they do them really well, but you're not booking a weekend-rental event barn with a coordinator who clocks out at midnight. You're booking a full experience…an actual inn, run by innkeeper Ali, who also serves as your wedding coordinator (single point of contact, which, if you've ever planned a wedding with five different vendors each sending you different PDFs, you already know how valuable that is).

It also means couples tend to book the full property for the weekend and tuck their close family and VIPs into rooms on site. Every guest room has a private bath. Four rooms are the "round turret rooms" with 270-degree panoramic ocean views. Yes, the ones with the beds facing the water. The Sunrise Suite has its own east-facing balcony, which, as you'd guess, is where you want your mother-in-law if she's a 5 a.m. coffee person. Almost every room has at least a partial ocean view.

Which leads to the real lesson here: Grey Havens is a weekend, not a day. Couples who get the most out of this venue plan like it's a tiny destination wedding, even if everyone drove up from Boston.

The ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception all happen in the same field of view.

This is why Grey Havens photographs and films the way it does (and one of the BIG reasons we love it…no lugging gear across acres of property!) The venue's entire "flow" happens on one flat coastal lawn, all facing the Atlantic.

Ceremony — oceanfront lawn. The ocean is your backdrop. You don't need an arch. You don't need a flower wall. The venue location does the work.
Cocktail hour — the wrap-around covered porch. This is the iconic image in every Grey Havens photo you've ever seen, and with good reason — it's a 270-degree natural-light rig with coastal views on three sides and guests already holding drinks. Pretty much a cinematographer's dream.
Reception — a tent on the lawn (up to 120 guests) or indoors at BLUE, the onsite restaurant (up to 60). BLUE is water-facing, so even the indoor option keeps the ocean in the frame.

For your guests, this means no shuttling, no weird downtime, no "wait, where do we go next?" moment. Ceremony ends, they walk twenty feet up to the porch, and they're at cocktail hour. It's one of the real practical reasons we love filming and photographing weddings here…guests stay present, the light keeps working, and the day never loses its rhythm.

Here's what you actually need to know about capacity, catering, and the rain plan.

The stuff couples really want to know:

Guest count. Outdoor capacity is up to 120, indoor at BLUE is up to 60. If you have 120 guests outdoors and weather goes sideways, you're committed to the tent. If you're flexible under 60, BLUE is a charming indoor backup with water views. Emily and Caleb were at 60, which is genuinely a sweet spot here.
Catering. Runs through BLUE, the onsite restaurant. Three modes: casual lobster bake, sit-down dinner, or an upscale cocktail reception with heavy hors d'oeuvres. Dietary accommodations handled. You're not trucking in catering from Portland.
The tent + all the stuff. Tent, tables, chairs, linens, china, glassware, dance floor…the inn connects you with a rental vendor. It is not DIY. You are not stress-driving to a rental warehouse at 6 a.m. on wedding day.
Rain plan. Tented outdoors is the real answer; indoor backup at BLUE only works if you're at 60 or fewer. Have the tent conversation early.
Vendors. The inn has a trusted local network they'll connect you with — DJs, florists, officiants, hair/makeup. They've seen what works here many times.
Seasons. Spring, summer, or fall. It is not a winter venue. September, where Emily and Caleb landed, is peak “late-Maine-summer-light,” warm and gold by late afternoon, cool enough in the evening to throw a shawl over your dress for the portraits on the bluff.
Availability. As of early 2026 they were fully booked through 2026 and taking 2027+ inquiries. If you're reading this post after falling in love with the look of the place, plan long-horizon. This is a years-out booking, not a three-months-out booking.

Emily and Caleb's September wedding was a perfect Grey Havens day.

One of our favorite weddings here was Emily and Caleb's. They'd met a decade earlier on OkCupid, a 94% match to be exact! Emily, as the story goes, fixated on the 6% and canceled their first date. A few weeks later, Caleb persisted and tried again, and she said yes. He took her to the Museum of Science in Boston. Ten years later they were standing on the oceanfront lawn at Grey Havens with 60 of their people.

The day itself was 60 guests, no first look, classic Maine September: golden and clear from the morning prep through the first dance. The officiant pronounced them married with the line "by the power vested in me by the State of Maine, and by the far greater power of the love you have shown one another." Their hot mic caught Caleb whispering "best-looking bride I've ever seen." Emily's response: "Damn right. Get that on the record." We got it Emily, don’t worry!

The reception was inside at BLUE, maxing out the capacity of the restaurant, but creating the coziest, most intimate dinner vibes. Cake was by Dzerts by Daphne. Florals by Golden Brook Farm, who grow their own flowers a few miles from the ocean up in Camden. Aull That Entertainment ran the dance floor.

The porch is your cocktail-hour money shot.

A small craft note for couples and their photo/video team: the wrap-around porch faces multiple directions, which means the natural light keeps working as the sun moves. Guests cluster against the railing, the harbor does its thing behind them, and you'll have more usable cocktail-hour coverage from this one location than at most entire venues. Plan for it. Hang out up there longer than you think you should. Your photographer and videographer will thank you.

Same note, inverted, for the ceremony: the oceanfront lawn faces the water. In a late-afternoon September window, that light goes warm fast. If you're doing ceremony later in the day, plan for golden-hour portraits right after. You’ll want twenty minutes or so to make the small trek out to the bluff before you lose the gold.

What's around, for your out-of-town guests.

Grey Havens is on Georgetown Island. It's not a downtown. That's part of the draw. Things within easy reach for the day before or the rehearsal morning:

Reid State Park — 1.5 miles past the inn. 550 acres, mile-long beach, crashing surf, a natural lagoon, wooded trails. Rehearsal-morning-hike energy.
Bath — the nearest town with a real downtown. Shipbuilding history, the Maine Maritime Museum, restaurants.
Boothbay Harbor and Camden — both a skip up the coast if your guests are turning the weekend into a proper Maine trip.
Portland Jetport (PWM) — about an hour's drive for fly-in guests.

If you're considering Grey Havens Inn for your own wedding...

We've filmed up and down the midcoast Maine wedding circuit…Linekin Bay Resort, Peaks Island, venues that share a coastline with Grey Havens but don't share its feel. Grey Havens is specific. It's an inn with a soul, a ceremony lawn that doesn't need decoration, a cocktail porch that does the work of a set designer, and a single-coordinator model that keeps the logistics honest. If you want a wife-and-husband wedding video and photo team who already knows the property, who knows where the light lands on the porch at 5:40 p.m. in late September, and can work around the sometimes-tight reception space, you know where to find us!