best wedding photographer – San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photography Blog

Beyond Wedding Photos

Often times there is more to photographing a San Francisco city hall wedding then just making nice pictures. The day of the wedding can be stressful and it is no different at city hall. Though truthfully, there is less to go wrong because with a civil ceremony you avoid problems with setting up the reception, food issues and choosing the perfect wedding favors. We recently photographed a wedding a city hall where we are able to help both the bride and groom prepare for the ceremony. There were a few minor complications and we were there to help!

Happy Bride and Groom with Marriage Certificate and officiant

Groom’s Pants Too Long

The groom asked me while waiting to check in at the County Clerk if I thought his pants were too long. They did seem to be a bit long, but what could be done this close to their civil ceremony? I remembered back to how I used to “hem” my own pants temporily with tape and suggested that to the groom. After some discussion, I went into the Clerk’s office and asked one of my friends who works the front desk if we could borrow some tape. After some visual measurements and approval by the bride we managed to put a nice temporary hem on the pants and they looked great!

Groom kissing bride on the 3rd floor of SF City Hall

Bride’s Eyelash Problems

As this was going on, I noticed the bride struggling with getting her eyelashes looking the way she wanted them, but there was nobody to hold the mirror for her because the Groom was busy “hemming” his pants. So without the bride asking me, I grabbed the mirror for her and held it while she did the finishing touches on her eyes. Just a simple gesture really and in no way heroic, but it was much appreciated by both of our clients.

Bride and groom in front of city hall sign while twirling her dress.

I never really gave it a second thought until a few weeks later I received a 5 star review from the newlyweds about their SF city hall wedding. One of the highlights of this Yelp review was the bride mentioning both of the problems above and how we helped. Again, these were relatively easy tasks, but it reminded me how important it is to be there for your city hall wedding photography client in all ways possible. Of course, we still needed to deliver great photos of their wedding, but the sometimes the little things get noticed and appreciated the most!

Why Book a Pro Wedding Photographer Part 2

Continuing from our most recent post about why to hire a Professional City Hall Wedding Photographer:

Guiding you through the Process

This is one advantage that most brides and grooms don’t think about. Yes, we know how to help you with the whole city hall wedding process. From procuring your wedding license to checking in at the County Clerks’s office and then finally the ceremony. Is this kind of assistance really necessary? Probably not, but if you want to truly enjoy your wedding day, it makes sense to let someone else handle the complicated process of having your civil ceremony at city hall. We find that most of our couples really are at a loss of where to go and what to do on the day of their ceremony. When do you bring in the witness? Why are we checking in? Where do we get married? These are common questions we are asked when we first meet our engaged couples on the day of their wedding. To make the day go smoothly, we simply guide the couple through each step and stay with them the whole time. Our couples love this and it makes their special day care free.

Posing the Married Couple at City Hall

While it is true that your friend or relative who is “really good with a camera” may be able to take high quality images that are in focus, chances are they will not know how to pose the couple. This is where most amateur wedding photographers fall down on the job. Not coming up with fun and unique poses and more importantly, not knowing how to make the bride look her best. Brides come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and each one of them deserves a professional wedding photographer who knows how to accentuate the good parts and hide the less than perfect aspects of the bride’s look. This is not something that just anyone can do without any training or experience. A professional wedding photography can take one look at the couple and know exactly how to handle the posing. Your wedding day is too important of an event to leave to chance.

Final Products – Wedding Albums and Prints

What happens when your San Francisco City Hall wedding is over? If you hired a professional wedding photographer, you will receive edited images within a month or less in most cases. We deliver ours to our married couples in 3 weeks. If you have your Uncle Bob photograph your wedding, when will you receive the photos? When will he get to it? With they even be professionally edited? There are many reading this article right now thinking, big deal, we can do all of this ourselves. The truth of the matter is that statistics show that most wedding couples do absolutely nothing with their wedding digital files. Sure, they may post a few on Social Media and maybe even make a print on their home Inkjet printer. But is this really how that should be handled? We offer our couples retouched professionally processed prints and beautiful wedding albums as options. Many of our clients take advantage of this. Even those that do not are assured of receiving a finished product after their wedding. Fully edited and perfectly exposed wedding pictures!

Elegant pose at SF City Hall done by a professional wedding photographer — Elegant pose at SF City Hall

City Hall Wedding Pictures

Another amazing bride and groom at San Francisco city hall. Katie and Kyle reserved the 4th Floor North Gallery to allow all of their guests to sit down in chairs. They also roped off the entire side of the floor to allow the bridal party to have privacy from other weddings and tourists. The cost for this is $1,000 for 1 hour of reserved time. They did a traditional wedding procession with the bride being led into the ceremony by her parents. The happy groom watching as they came in. After a 20 minute ceremony and romantic vows, the couple was married!

The bride was very well prepared with a list of family photos that she provided us. We love it when the couple can give us a predetermined list of family groupings. It truly makes that part of the wedding go much fast allowing more time for bride and groom formal photos. We began our shoot once we completed the family portraits, taking the couple around the building on what we call our “city hall photo tour”. See below for some sample photos of our wedding photography shoot.

City Hall bride checks her wedding gown

Bride and Groom walking down the Grand Staircase

We spent around 45 minutes going from floor to floor at San Francisco city hall and taking pictures at many of our favorite locations. It was unseasonably warm for an early February wedding so we took it slow to keep our bride fresh. We were also quite pleased with the lack of crowds for a Thursday. Normally Thursdays are the second busiest day at city hall, but early February is a slower time here and we were blessed with no crowds and the opportunity to get some great images. With both the bride and groom letting us know that they were athletic, we asked them if they would be willing to do a lift shot. We wanted Kyle to pick up Katie and lift her high in the air in front of the city hall sign. Here is the fantastic result!

Bride Cheering in front of the city hall sign

We really enjoyed this wedding and helped this couple make memories for years to come.

SF City Hall Wedding Photographer

We worked with a great couple last week and I wanted to talk about it while it was fresh in my mind. Yuan and Tracy chose our Golden Gate package which provided them with 1 additional San Francisco photography location after we finished at City Hall. They choose to go to the Legion of Honor and we drove them there. One of the things I offer couples who choose this location is the chance to take a quick photo of the Golden Gate bridge in addition to the Legion. This is because it so close by and easy to access. We often take couples to the 17th hole at Lincoln Park golf course to get the bridge picture, but this time we went to Lands End. What a great place to get a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge! Also present at Lands End are nice walking trails and beautiful tall trees.

The Grand Staircase at city hall in Sepia Tone

City Hall Photography Tour

Before we embarked upon our journey to the Legion of Honor we of course needed to complete our wedding photography tour at San Francisco City Hall. It was very important to Yuan and Tracy to get a shot of their entire wedding party in front of City Hall’s famed Grand Staircase. Fortunately, they booked a later ceremony (3:00 pm) and thus city hall was starting to clear out shortly after we were ready to start their professional wedding photography. After completing some smaller family combinations, we took everyone down to the bottom of the Staircase including the Bride and Groom. We managed to have some moments where the staircase became relatively clear of tourists and other weddings allowing us to get a clear shot! See below to check out their image

Once we got this all important photo, we took the couple around the building to take more formal wedding photography. The shot below was done in the 2nd floor hallway. We always like to do some fun shots with our brides and grooms to get them warmed up. We also wanted to figure out if they were interested in doing some more fun photos or preferred to keep it more simple. We always allow our clients to let us know the style of wedding photography they want.

Affordable Package

The package that Yuan and Tracy choose provided them with 2.5 hours of coverage with that extra location already discussed above. This is the least expensive of our Tour Packages. Once we completed their wedding photography we took them to the San Francisco location of the reception, Jardiniere.

How to Plan Your SF City Hall Wedding

This is a quick step-by-step planning guide for your upcoming San Francisco City Hall Wedding. We receive many questions about what to do and how to prepare for a civil ceremony in this amazing historic building. The obvious first thing to do is choose a wedding date, we would suggest avoiding Fridays if possible because there are so many tourists and other weddings going on that day. Also, the wedding photography portion of your day will be much more challenging with so many people everywhere. Once you have your date you can:

Decide whether you want a reserved space at city hall by paying $1,000 and putting a deposit down on either the Mayors Balcony or 4th Floor North Gallery. You can do this by contacting the Events department at city hall by clicking the link. The advantage of doing this is that you will have a 1 hour roped off section of city hall all to yourself, complete with chairs for your guests. Most people only do this if they are planning on many guests. San Francisco city hall limits it’s standard weddings to 8 guests.
Book your marriage license appointment by clicking this link. This appointment should be made at least 1 hour before your ceremony. The County Clerk says you can just book it 30 minutes ahead, but my experience is that this is rushing it a bit. Be prepared to bring your current Identification and any other legal forms you might want to present. If you have a pending divorce, be sure to bring those documents just in case. You can use a Passport or Driver’s license for identification, just be sure that they are unexpired. City Hall will not accept out of date ID’s.
If you decided against paying for the reserved space but still want your wedding here, its now time to book your civil ceremony at City Hall. If possible, try to choose a Tuesday or a Wednesday for less crowds. We understand that many people do not have this option, but if you can, its well worth the smaller crowds. The time of your ceremony matters also, we suggest early morning or late afternoon for best access to all of the building without tourists everywhere around you.
Hire a professional wedding photographer! This is not just a pitch to have you book us, we are very passionate about the importance of recording this all important life milestone. Why rely on your friends Iphone camera? There are many great city hall wedding photographers available and some have excellent pricing. Just look around or talk to us!
On the day of your wedding, be sure to bring your ID and license if already obtained). We have had some couples forget to bring their Identification or assume that they don’t need to again. But you do! We also encourage the bride to bring walking shoes, the floors are marble and will take their toll after strolling through the building for a while.

Bride and Groom at the County Clerks office at city hall — Bride and Groom at the County Clerks office

Ready to Check in at the County Clerks office in San Francisco — Ready to Check in at the County Clerks office

Enjoy your wedding day in this historical wedding venue!

San Francisco Wedding Photography Locations

The month of January is always our slowest time period for city hall weddings. It’s in the middle of the winter and there is no special event or holiday in January. December of course is always busy due to the Beautiful Christmas tree and brides and grooms just like to get married at that time of the season. February features Valentine’s Day and we always have weddings right around this date. Many engaged couples actually choose to have their nuptials on this romantic holiday! Given this slight lull, I thought it would be helpful to take the time to discuss some of our favorite destinations in San Francisco that we take our city hall wedding couples.

Iconic San Francisco Destinations

We take our couples throughout San Francisco after our city hall wedding photography sessions. Here are some of the best san francisco wedding photographer locations:

Palace of Fine Arts

This is by far the most popular wedding photography destination. Especially chosen frequently by our international brides and grooms. It has a very large area for wedding photography with lots of options. The beautiful building is obviously the centerpiece, but there are large columns everywhere to use as a backdrop. The only negative is the amount of tourists here. Depending upon the time of day, it can be hard to find space without people looming in the background.

Legion of Honor

Another popular wedding photography spot, but fortunately MUCH less traveled by tourists. The Legion of Honor offers beautiful Beaux-Arts style architecture which many of San Francisco’s older buildings possess. We love taking our city hall brides and grooms around the inner open area and pose them between the gray repeating columns. The light is also fantastic here from a wedding photography standpoint. This is because you have indirect light that comes in from the side, but is also reflected by the neutral tones of the building. Perfect for a rainy day as well!

The Golden Gate Bridge

This is an obvious one, but there are many options and decisions to make. We try to help our newly married couples decide by providing them with the best possible information and ideas. Late in the afternoon you can approach the bridge from Ocean by Baker Beach. This provides nice warm light on the bridge and enhances the colors. Earlier in the morning, we often like to take pictures of our brides and grooms from the San Francisco Bay side of the bridge. This will often provide very nice dimensional lighting on the Golden Gate. Listed below are some of the most common angles to approach wedding photography of the bridge

Baker Beach
Crissy Field
Fort Point
Legion of Honor
17th Hole of Lincoln Park
Fort Baker
Lands End
Battery East Vista
Golden Gate Overlook
Marin County side

This completes part one of our San Francisco City Hall wedding photo destination options. We will be adding more locations next week, please stay tuned!

Ballerina Bride at City Hall

We love all of our brides and grooms and always make sure we work to get great images of all of them. However, every once in a while we are lucky enough to book a couple that are naturals. This particular couple included a groom who had taken Ball Room dancing lessons and a bride who was a Ballerina. We had a fantastic time with them at San Francisco City Hall with them booking our City Hall PLUS package which provided them with 2 hours of coverage including the ceremony and family photos.

To make things even more fun, the bride wore a unique wedding dress that you don’t normally see at City Hall. It was a totally fun dress and matched the personality of the woman wearing it. Here is what it looked like:

Ballerina Bride at City Hall — Ballerina Bride

Once the ceremony took place in the Rotunda we photographed a few images of their family and friends. The family members were all amazing and absolutely supportive of us and our wedding photography efforts. We spent some time talking to them and discussing some of the finer points of City Hall weddings and then we took the bride and groom around the building for their photo tour. We visited every single floor of City Hall starting with the Grand Staircase and then up to the 2nd Floor to get some shots in the hallway. We knew we had to make sure we took them up to the 3rd floor to take advantage of the beautiful window light so we headed there next. Here is one of our window shots!

We finished up on the amazing 4th Floor North Gallery at city hall which is probably the most beautiful location in the building for natural light. It was here that we took advantage of our client’s posing talents and tried some dance related poses. The 2 of them pulled off all of our poses with relative ease. We took a number of bride and groom shots on this floor including this one:

We also needed to include some romantic wedding photos to show the close connection between the bride and groom. This kind of posing is quite easy when your couple has that type of bond.

We finished up our photo shoot in typical fashion by taking the couple to the Famous City Hall sign on the Polk Street entrance to the building.

Christmas Wedding at City Hall

Christmas at San Francisco City Hall is always a wonderful time. The place is always very busy and the giant Christmas tree becomes the center point of this great wedding venue. For the past few years the tree has been decorated with Origami which makes for a very unique look. In addition, when evening comes the light reflects off of the Origami and creates patterns on the walls at city hall. It’s a pretty amazing scene. We photographed 6 weddings this year during the Christmas season and each one had it’s own unique feel. The primary reason for this Blog post is to just display a few photos from one of our larger weddings this Christmas season.

Bridal Portrait by the 3rd floor North Window

We started our formal shoot on the 3rd floor because city hall was pretty crowded and we were having trouble finding places without people in the background. This particular wedding was on a Friday which is definitely one of the most crowded days of the week. We have learned over the years where and when to take our brides and grooms once things get crowded. The 3rd floor is one of those places!

Once we completed our time on the 3rd floor, we headed back down to the Christmas Tree to get a few nice shots. Again, there were people everywhere and virtually no room to photograph the couple in the traditional place facing the Rotunda. Fortunately, we have alternative angles into the tree that is off to the side. Even though it’s a pretty obvious angle, many photographers without experience at city hall don’t know about it. We were able to get some fairly private images in front of the tree before moving on to our next location.

We spent over 1.5 hours at San Francisco city hall touring around taking photos and having fun. We managed to get all of the shots that most people always ask us about including the Grand Staircase and the 4th floor North Gallery. This despite the fact that City Hall had scheduled 7 reserved weddings that day, which usually brings a large number of people into the building. We were lucky to walk up to the beautiful North Gallery just when one wedding was ending and another was about to be set up.

Once we completed our City Hall photo tour, we drove the couple to Fort Point to get some professional wedding pictures with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The couple’s family also showed up at Fort Point allowing us to include them in many of the photos. It was a fantastic way to end our day.