When Canadian travel advisor Sarah De Sousa and her partner Josh swapped the traditional wedding aisle for the rain-soaked peaks and shimmering bays of Vietnam, they discovered that the most unforgettable moments are the ones you never planned.
At a Glance
Vietnam's Ha Long Bay serves as an ideal elopement destination, offering spontaneous ceremony locations, dramatic emerald waters, and flexible itineraries that adapt to weather changes. Couples can combine intimate vow exchanges on remote islands with adventure activities like cave exploration, hiking, and boat tours through UNESCO-listed landscapes.
There was no church, no seating chart, no catered reception hall. Instead, there was a 6am bus out of Hanoi, a pair of rain-drenched travellers, and a spontaneous decision to say their vows on a remote Vietnamese island surrounded by the emerald waters of Ha Long Bay. For travel advisor Sarah De Sousa, that was exactly the point.
De Sousa and her partner Josh are not the kind of couple who stumbled into adventure. Their love story was built on it. From a backpacking trip through Thailand early in their relationship to a five-day mountainous trek through Peru, where Josh proposed, the two had long understood that the best experiences rarely arrive on schedule. When it came to planning their wedding, nothing about a traditional ceremony felt right. An elopement, they agreed, was the only answer.
"We didn't want a big show and production that a traditional wedding often becomes," De Sousa reflects. What they wanted was intimacy, spontaneity, and the freedom to be entirely themselves. Vietnam, as it turned out, would give them all three and a few surprises besides.
How Vietnam Made the List
The choice of destination came together in a characteristically serendipitous way. When De Sousa and Josh began searching for a videographer to document their elopement, she presented him with three video clips and asked him to choose his favourite. He selected James Alexander of Zephyr Productions. When the couple connected with James, they discovered he kept a bucket list of dream travel destinations, and Vietnam was on it. The connection was immediate. "When we travelled to Thailand together, we always discussed travelling to Vietnam," De Sousa recalls. "We really felt like Vietnam was calling us." Thanks to a videographer's wish list, a destination was born.
The planning, however, came with its own particular challenge. Unlike a resort wedding where venues can be pre-booked and inspected, an adventurous elopement requires couples to scout locations on arrival. De Sousa describes the inability to see possible elopement locations beforehand as the hardest part of the process. Reviews and photographs helped, but ultimately the couple had to trust the journey. That willingness to surrender control would prove to be both the greatest test and the greatest gift of the entire trip.
Rain, Caves, and a Change of Plans
The itinerary began with a pre-dawn departure from Hanoi to Cat Ba Island, where the couple planned their first look on Day One. The weather was unsettled but cooperative enough for Josh to see his bride for the first time, a moment De Sousa describes as among the most magical of the entire experience. "Just how magical the whole situation was," she says, "from the first look and then having our elopement not happening on the exact same day. It was so nice to be able to get ready and have our first look at one location and then have our actual ceremony at another location."
Day Two was supposed to be the day. The plan was to hike to the peak of Cat Ba Island National Park and exchange vows at the summit. Then the rain arrived, and it did not simply drizzle. It poured. The hike was abandoned. Instead, the group pivoted to Hospital Caves, wartime shelters carved into the landscape where injured soldiers were hidden during the conflict. It was an unexpected detour that added a layer of history and weight to an already meaningful day.
When the skies finally cleared, the group boarded a boat tour through Ha Long Bay. Vietnamese beer was poured, local food was shared, and kayaks were paddled through jade-green water. Then, almost without warning, the decision was made. Their next stop, Van Boi Island, was the place. There, with the bay spread out around them and no formal ceremony in sight, De Sousa and Josh exchanged their vows. A traditional Vietnamese meal that followed became, in their words, the reception dinner.
One detail they had entirely overlooked? An umbrella. "The weather was something we never put much thought into because we were going during the 'best' time of year," De Sousa admits. They were rained on, soaked through at points, and yet not once did they consider it a failure. "In the end it made for an adventure of a lifetime."
The Days That Followed
The adventure did not stop at the altar. On Day Three, the group raced up the peak of Cat Ba National Park in record time, completing a two-hour hike in one, arriving sweaty but rewarded with sweeping views before catching their bus. Day Four brought Ninh Binh, where a river boat tour through Tam Coc delivered what De Sousa describes as one of the most epic landscapes she has ever witnessed. Temples glowed in the hazy evening heat, and the famous Hang Mua Viewpoint rewarded the couple's burning legs with panoramic views of the river below after approximately one thousand stairs.
The final day in Hanoi covered fifteen kilometres on foot through forty-degree heat, with street food stops, impromptu games of hacky sack with locals, and an attempt at jump rope with neighbourhood children. Even frog made it onto the menu, and De Sousa ate it.
What Vietnam Taught a Travel Advisor
For De Sousa, the experience was not only personally transformative but professionally illuminating. "Vietnam should definitely be on everyone's list," she says without hesitation. "There is so much history, and just the people, they are the kindest people and they are just so happy to see us travel there. The food was amazing, it is a cheap place to visit, the scenery is breathtaking, the beaches are gorgeous."
She is equally clear about the type of traveller this kind of trip suits. "When you are eloping, you kind of have to be easygoing people," she says. "It just surprised me how easygoing everybody was." The pivot from a mountaintop ceremony to a spontaneous island vow exchange could have felt like defeat. Instead, it felt like the trip revealing its best self. "Looking back, the way it planned out was better than I could have even imagined."
Having lived the experience herself, De Sousa now brings something irreplaceable to the couples who come to her dreaming of something different. She understands the gap between what you plan and what actually happens, and she knows that gap is where the real magic lives. "Having experienced this myself, I am able to have these conversations with others about what they are imagining for their elopement, and I am able to help them create such a beautiful itinerary that will help them travel."
As for what comes next, De Sousa is already looking east again. Southeast Asia, she says, is a region she intends to keep exploring, with more destinations waiting to be discovered and, no doubt, more adventures waiting to unfold exactly as they should.
