Each month we will try to feature a stand out wedding that occurred at San Francisco City Hall. We will make an effort to show a nice variety of weddings and couples. We are excited to show you this month's featured event.
Amber and Miguel extended their city hall wedding photography coverage because they wanted to start the event off with a traditional "First look". We were happy to assist with this and actually set up the whole encounter for the couple. The plan was for Miguel to station himself behind one of City Hall's beautiful columns and wait for his bride to surprise him with his back turned. We then had Amber sneak up on him looking beautiful in her wedding gown. She tapped him on the shoulder and then he turned around to see his bride. We, of course, captured every moment. This is a fun and exciting way to begin a City Hall wedding and lends itself well to photography. We will also sometimes video tape this for the couple with a unedited clip. We try not to intervene too much in this process because we want it to be as natural as possible. The only thing I ask the groom to do is turn towards the camera and not the wall when he looks to see his bride. They usually forget anyway!
Amber and Miguel booked our San Francisco City Hall PLUS package which was the appropriate choice given the size of their guest list. We strongly recommend couples book this package when they have friends and relatives attending their wedding. This package allows extra time to do some nice family photos and larger group shots. In addition, it also provides the couple with some nice candid interactive images with them and their guests. When the ceremony is over, there is naturally going to be hugging, laughter and maybe even a few tears. We are ready to capture these special memories for the couple. The other benefit of this package is that does give you additional time in the building for the City Hall photo tour.
This couple had a fun idea for a great way to end their SF City Hall event. We lined up their guests on the steps leading up the building and everyone had bubble wands. As the couple descended down the stairs, everyone blew bubbles and it made for a nice ending photo for their special day. See photo above. This is a great way to handle this especially in light of SF city hall's rules prohibiting rice or anything else that needs to be cleaned up after.
This wedding was also especially important to us because it was one of the last weddings we photographed before the pandemic closed down City Hall. This couple and of course us had no idea at that time what was to come. We are happy to report that city hall is now reopened for weddings and they are allowing full photography services as well. No restrictions as long as you wear a mask. We ask our couples to keep the masks on between each photo location and then briefly take it off for the photo. It has been working well. We are glad to be back!