If you've spent any time on the Washington coast, you already know that The Tokeland Hotel isn't just a place to eat. It's one of those rare spots that stays with you. The kind of place where the light comes through the pane windows at an angle that makes everything feel a little golden, the decor is gloriously, unapologetically a lot, and somehow the people who work there make you feel like you've been coming in for years, even the first time you walk through the door.

I know this because I've been walking through that door for seven years.

Brunch. Mimosas. Steak dinners. More mimosas. Oyakadon. Did I mention the mimosas? For the better part of a decade, The Tokeland Hotel was my favorite place to eat on the coast, and it never once occurred to me that I would one day be photographing it professionally. Honestly, for a long time it never occurred to me that commercial photography was even a thing a person could build a real career around, but that's a different blog post.

The point is: when I made the shift from wedding photography into hospitality and destination work, The Tokeland Hotel felt like a dream. Like, the dream. The one you don't say out loud because you don't want to jinx it.

So when I was at brunch with a friend, at the end of brunch and a mimosa flight (or two), the owner's son said as we were leaving "hey, you're Chelsea, right?" and I gave him finger guns and said yes and nothing more. Because apparently that's how I network. And I genuinely did not expect that interaction to turn into photographing their new cabin, let alone their events. And yet here we are.