National Park Wedding Photography Permits: What Changed in 2025

If the couple holds the park's wedding permit, you need nothing else to photograph or film their ceremony in a national park. Since January 4, 2025, federal law has said a park may not require a permit, an authorization or a fee for filming or still photography that documents an allowed or authorized event, whatever the group size and whether or not you are paid, and it names weddings. A session with no ceremony needs nothing for five people or fewer who stay in public areas with hand-held gear. What can still need an authorization is everything around the camera: booking the site, officiating, driving the couple.

The law is section 125 of the EXPLORE Act (Public Law 118-234), now 54 U.S.C. 100905, and it replaced the old commercial filming law rather than adding to it. The National Park Service's own summary says the same in plain words. Much of the advice still circulating on this question predates it, and so do some park pages and one federal regulation, which is the part of this post most likely to save you an argument.

What the 2025 law says

The statute sorts every filming or still photography activity in a park into four cases. Photo and video are treated identically, and so is the reason you are shooting: the Park Service says it does not matter whether the work is commercial, non-commercial, content creation, by a student or by the media.

• Documenting an allowed or authorized event: no permit, no authorization and no fee, at any group size and whether or not anyone is paid. Section 100905(a)(7)(B) says filming or photography at an allowed or authorized event, "including a wedding, engagement party, family reunion, or celebration of a graduate", is merely incidental, and (a)(2)(B) exempts incidental work. The subsection's heading reads "No additional permits, commercial use authorizations, or fees".
• Fewer than six people, no event: no permit, authorization or fee, as long as every condition in the next section holds.
• Six to eight people, no event: the park may ask for a de minimis use authorization. It is free, it has to be available online and in person, and a qualifying application is approved immediately. It is not a permit.
• More than eight people, or any condition missed: the park may require a permit and charge a fee based on the days, the crew and the equipment, plus its own costs of handling the permit.

The Park Service's summary folds the middle two together and says that in most cases permits and fees are not required for eight or fewer individuals. Both readings agree, because the authorization for six to eight costs nothing and is not a permit.

Before 2025, the same wedding could need a permit for the videographer and not for the photographer. The Interior Department's 2013 rule says "All commercial filming requires a permit" and lists videography among its examples, while still photography needs one only with a model, set or prop, in a place closed to the public, or where the park would incur costs (43 CFR 5.2 and 5.12). A hybrid team had to ask the question twice and could get two answers. Under the 2025 law, it gets one.

The conditions for a session without a ceremony

A first look the day before, an engagement session or a day-after shoot has no event to be incidental to, so the group-size tiers apply, and every one of these conditions in section 100905(a)(5) has to hold:

• You do not impede or intrude on other visitors, do not disturb natural or cultural resources or a scenic value, and leave facilities fairly available to everyone else.
• You are somewhere the public is allowed.
• You do not need exclusive use of a site or area.
• You are not in a localized area that receives a very high volume of visitation. The statute does not define one, so the park decides.
• You use no set or staging equipment. Tripods, monopods and hand-held lights are expressly fine.
• You follow the park's visitor rules, including closures.
• The shoot is not likely to cost the park extra administration.
• You comply with other federal, state and local law, which the statute says includes the law on unmanned aerial equipment.

Three of those decide most sessions. Exclusive use is the one photographers cross without noticing: asking hikers to step out of a viewpoint for ten minutes is asking for it. Very high visitation catches the overlooks couples ask for at sunrise. Grand Teton gives a sense of what a park counts as busy, because its list of places where it issues no small ceremony permits names Hidden Falls, Inspiration Point and Jenny Lake Overlook, and then rules out areas with high visitation in general.

Staging is where styled shoots live. On our reading, a styled elopement with an arch of florals, a set table, chairs and a hired couple is past hand-held gear, is often more than eight people once the vendors are counted, and is exactly the kind of shoot the law still lets a park put under a permit and a fee. Ask the park before you book the florist.

What can still need a commercial use authorization

The 2025 law is about cameras. Selling other services inside a park is governed by a rule it did not change: 36 CFR 5.3 prohibits engaging in or soliciting any business in a park without a permit, contract or other written agreement, and for a small operator that agreement is usually a commercial use authorization (CUA) under 54 U.S.C. 101925.

The parks we read draw the line in the same place. Rocky Mountain issues CUAs to wedding and event planners for "scheduling ceremony sites, officiating ceremonies, and photography on date of ceremony", and its conditions (dated September 15, 2026) add a $75 fee for each wedding booked under the CUA and require every vendor working for the planner, photographers included, to be additionally insured on the planner's liability certificate. Great Sand Dunes covers the photographer under the couple's permit, but says a photographer or officiant who advertises services in the park, with the booking done through them, needs an additional permit. Great Smoky Mountains requires a separate CUA for commercial transportation. The Park Service's own page says a photography workshop run as a business may need one.

So, on our reading: if you are hired to photograph or film a couple who hold their own permit, the 2025 law covers you. If you sell an elopement package in which you choose the site, apply for the permit, officiate, guide the hike or drive the couple, the planning half of that package is a commercial service the law did not touch, and the park may want a CUA for it. A CUA is built for small operators. The statute limits it to businesses with no more than $25,000 a year in gross receipts from services provided inside the park, services that start and end outside the park, and a few others, for a term of no more than two years.

Doing business without an authorization a park requires is a federal misdemeanor. 36 CFR 1.3 applies 18 U.S.C. 1865, up to six months in jail and a fine, which 18 U.S.C. 3571 generally caps at $5,000 for that class of offense. A phone call to the park is cheaper than being right.

Where a park page still says something else

The law changed in January 2025, and not every page and rule changed with it. Great Smoky Mountains' wedding page (updated September 24, 2026) still says photography and video services need no separate filming permit "as long as models, props, or sets will not be in use", and points to the definitions in 43 CFR 5.12. That is the Interior Department's 2013 rule for filming on Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service land, and the Code of Federal Regulations, current to October 23, 2026, still prints it with no change since the 2025 law. Its definition of a model leaves out wedding parties only "if the image will not be used to promote or sell a product or service".

Read that with your portfolio in mind. A couple you post on your website or in an ad is, on the old definition's plain words, photographed to promote a service. The 2025 statute removes the question: being paid "shall not affect the permissibility" of the activity, content made for commercial purposes counts as ordinary filming or photography, and an allowed wedding is incidental at any size. The Forest Service rewrote its own rule to match the law, effective March 19, 2026. The Interior Department had not as of October 2026. A statute outranks a regulation that conflicts with it, but that is an argument for an email before the date, not for a trailhead.

When a park page and the statute disagree, write to the park's special park uses office before the wedding, cite 54 U.S.C. 100905(a)(2)(B) and (a)(7)(B), ask what it requires of you, and keep the reply with the couple's permit. Several parks already follow the law in so many words: Olympic reproduces the Park Service's summary, and Rocky Mountain, Glacier and Great Sand Dunes each say the photographer is covered by the couple's permit.

The couple's permit sets your limits

Your exemption rides on their permit, so its terms are yours. On every permit we read, you count toward the group size, you work inside the permitted window and site, and the permit has to exist in the first place. Rocky Mountain warns that a ceremony outside a designated site is "subject to citation of the wedding party, photographer, and/or officiant". Eight parks, read on October 27, 2026:

• Yosemite: a special use permit for any wedding, $150, applications more than 21 days ahead, up to two hours, no chairs or tables at the site beyond those for guests with special needs, and the Social Security number of one of the couple on the application. No separate rule for photographers.
• Rocky Mountain: $300, designated sites only, 30 people at the largest. Photographers and officiants are covered by the wedding permit and count toward the limit. The permit admits the couple from two hours before the ceremony and for the rest of the day for portraits, and it doubles as their timed entry reservation.
• Grand Teton: $200 and at least 30 days to process. Groups of more than 12, counting photographers and videographers, need a large site-specific permit, and every one of those sites was booked for 2026. Applications for 2027 open on December 3, 2026. Permits run one hour, which includes setup, ceremony and photography.
• Glacier: $125. Photographers and officiants are covered by the permit and count toward the group size, and the park suggests sharing the permit with every vendor, since they too have to follow its conditions.
• Arches: $185 for a one-hour permit, plus a monitoring charge. After the ceremony the couple can be photographed anywhere in the park, and that part is not monitored "because it is not part of the permitted activity".
• Great Smoky Mountains: $50, applications at least 30 days ahead. Capacity counts vendors, the permitted time includes photography, and the permit holder can be held liable for a vendor who breaks a condition.
• Great Sand Dunes: $200. The photographer and officiant are covered unless they advertise services in the park and the booking runs through them.
• Olympic: a $50 application fee for a wedding of more than five people, and no permit at all for five or fewer. The two-hour window includes photography in the same general area, and permits are issued to the couple, "not photographers, wedding planners or officiants".

Two consequences for how you run the day. A one-hour permit that includes setup and photography is a different wedding day timeline from a two-hour one, so get the window before you plan the portraits. And because the couple's permit is the document that covers you, ask for a copy and keep it on you. Great Smoky Mountains wants one on the dashboard of a vehicle associated with the event.

The drone is still out

Nothing in the 2025 law helps a drone. Its own conditions require compliance with the law on unmanned aerial equipment, and the Park Service's prohibition on launching, landing and operating drones in park units still stands, as the wedding drone rules post explains. Rocky Mountain, Glacier, Grand Teton, Arches and Great Sand Dunes all repeat the ban on their wedding pages, and Great Sand Dunes and Rocky Mountain add that a licensed pilot gets no exception.

National forests and BLM land

The same section of the EXPLORE Act rewrote the filming law for national forests and the rest of the Interior Department's land (16 U.S.C. 460l-6d), with the same tiers and the same rule for allowed events. The Forest Service put it into its regulations on March 19, 2026, at 36 CFR 251.50(f) to (i). Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service land still sits under the unchanged 2013 rule. An overlook just outside a park boundary can be forest or BLM land, so find out whose land it is before you look up its rules.

Insurance a permit can ask for

Some permits carry an insurance condition. Great Smoky Mountains' conditions say that when the superintendent requires it, the permittee carries general liability insurance of $1,000,000 per occurrence with the United States of America named as an additional insured. Rocky Mountain's planner CUA sets $500,000 per person per accident and wants each vendor on the planner's certificate. What that kind of policy covers on a wedding day, and what it leaves out, is in what wedding photographer insurance actually excludes.

A checklist before a national park elopement

• Find out whose land it is: national park, national forest, BLM or state.
• Confirm the couple has the park's permit where one is required, and that its group size counts you, your second shooter and the videographer.
• Get a copy of the permit and keep it on you. Note the window, and whether portraits elsewhere in the park are allowed after it.
• For a session with no ceremony, keep the group under six, stay in public areas, carry only hand-held gear, and keep clear of closures and the park's busiest spots, and you need nothing. Six to eight people: ask about the free de minimis authorization. A styled shoot with a set: ask about a permit.
• If you plan, book, guide, drive or officiate, ask the park whether it wants a commercial use authorization for that part of the work.
• Leave the drone at home.
• If a park page contradicts the 2025 law, ask the park in writing and keep the answer.
• Budget for entrance fees. The Park Service says they apply even when no permit is required.

If you market park elopements with a page for each park, build each one around weddings you have actually photographed there. The reasons are in the rules for wedding photographer location pages, and a park you have never worked in gives a page nothing first-hand to say.