Welcome to our Same-Sex City Hall wedding photography web page. We were one of the first City Hall wedding photography teams to start shooting gay / lesbian weddings and we were proud to do so. We will make your day as special and as fun as possible. Our service goes well beyond just simply giving you great photographs. We understand that this is a major event in your lives and so we do everything we can to make your day memorable and easy. We have been serving the LGBTQ community for years and have enjoyed every minute of it. Our upbeat and creative approach to wedding photography will keep you and your partner relaxed while having your photos taken at San Francisco city hall. Once the ceremony is finished, we will take the two of you on a photographic journey of this beautiful and historic building. However, first we like to capture all of your family/friend pictures to allows us to take the happy couple around the building for pictures. We do not want the family members and have friend to wait for us to complete the photo tour so we do the group shots first. Our City Hall photo tour will normally cover all 4 floors of the building and we will help pose you at each location. You are also welcome to create your own poses if you prefer or we can do a combination. Most of our clients want us to control the posing, but provide us some input along the way. This balanced approach works quite well. It ensures that our couples receive all of our normal locations and backgrounds that they have seen throughout our website, but also allows them to make some changes where they see fit. The important thing is to make sure everyone is comfortable and at ease. We make it our priority to make sure our Same-sex couples are happy with how we are posing them. We never ask any of our newlyweds to create a pose that would be uncomfortable to them.
We are also at your service, ready to answer any questions you might have regarding San Francisco City Hall. We will assist with any planning issues you may be having with your marriage ceremony. We have photographed over 600 weddings at this iconic landmark and have treasured the many wonderful moments we have witnessed. If you are eloping and need a witness for the Marriage License signing, we are proud to serve in this capacity for you at no extra charge. We absolutely will adjust our style to your needs and desires. We understand that some couples want complex posing and more romantic shots. Other couples want to keep it simple. We will discuss your photographic needs prior to the wedding and adjust accordingly. We pride ourselves on making your photography experience not only comfortable, but fun! This is true for Same-Sex couples and all others we photograph at city hall.
We are fortunate to have been chosen to photograph well over 150 Same-Sex/Gender city hall weddings over the past 11 years. One of the things we especially appreciate is the love and happiness of many of our couples who are finally getting married after being together for so many years. A few years back we photographed a wedding of a Gay couple who had been together for 46 years! It's truly an honor to be a part of so many of these momentous occasions! Shortly after same-sex marriage was legalized in California, there was a huge backlog of couples who had been together for years and they were eager to tie the knot. We have featured many of these couples in the video above. In addition to the 46 year couple, we also photographed weddings of couple who had been together for 22, 34, 41 and 42 years! These LGBTQ newlyweds can now enjoy the benefits of a legal marriage in California after waiting so many years. For many, however, the legal issue is not really the point. It is more about knowing that you are finally truly married in the eyes of the state and all others. Fortunately, there are also some financial tax benefits as well.
We offer San Francisco city hall wedding photography packages to fit any celebration, including those ranging from 1 to 4 hours of coverage and optional reception coverage. Choose the San Francisco Venue of your choice for your party and we will be there to cover it from start to finish! Please ask us about our SF City Tour package where we will take the 2 of you to any of your favorite iconic locations in the city of San Francisco. Choose from 1, 2 or 3 additional locations after we finish up our wedding photography at San Francisco city hall. Some of our favorite locations include, The Palace of Fine Arts, Baker Beach, The Legion of Honor, and of course the Golden Gate Bridge. We have discovered some unique angles and locations to get photos of the bridge and we can't wait to show you! Above all, we try to keep the San Francisco tour upbeat and memorable. We always provide our Same-Sex newlyweds with sufficient time to enjoy whatever destination they choose. It's not all about San Francisco wedding photography, we want you to enjoy the experience. To see a detailed listing of our most popular San Francisco photo tour destinations please click the link. Don't forget taking a Cable Car ride, this always makes for a fantastic image to add to our wedding album. We have a great place to board San Francisco's most famous symbol and then you get to pretend to ride while we take amazing pics. You can even hang off the Cable Car if you are brave enough!
Or course you expect great images when you hire a professional San Francisco city hall wedding photographer and we do everything we can to make sure that happens. We also feel that the process of getting your wedding pictures taken is important too. We want it to be a positive experience from start to finish. Our upbeat and positive approach helps make that happen. Many of our clients tell us that they had so much fun during the photography process that the photo shoot was a great part of their wedding day. Many of our Yelp reviews talk as much about the wedding photography experience as they do about the quality of the photographs. That's fine with us! We are in this business to enjoy what we do while delivering the best wedding photos possible. We would be honored if you chose us to photograph your same-gender marriage celebration. The wedding images above highlight some of our recent LGBTQ marriages, but there are so much more throughout the site. Below are some links to other Same-Sex wedding pictures. If you would prefer to see one complete City Hall Same-Sex Marriage, click the link. Sometimes and it is more helpful to see one complete wedding portfolio rather than a compilation of the best shots.
Our full compliment of SF City Hall Wedding Photography packages can be found HERE, but we are more than happy to create a custom package to fit the needs of of your LGBTQ wedding celebration. If one of our listed collections don't fit your needs, please email us mike@cityhallphotos.com or call and we will build a package around your budget and preferences. Many of our clients do this because they want something specific in terms of location or timing. We will do whatever is possible to make your marriage day perfect for you both. A large percentage of our same-sex couples ask for a custom package. Be as creative as you want, we are happy to accommodate you. We worked with a Gay couple that included the ceremony at city hall, a one location shoot at The Palace of Fine Arts and then a 3 hour break before we covered their North Beach wedding reception. Yes, we do charge a little bit of a split fee in some cases, but for this package we didn't due to the large financial commitment the couple made to us. They even included one of our beautiful 11X14 wedding albums in their package. Just let us know details about the timing of your event and where you want to go. We will do the rest!
One of the things we have noticed with Same-Sex weddings at city hall is that the couples seldom have bouquets or boutonnieres. This is especially true of the men. Flowers are the perfect accent to the largely colorless walls and floors of the San Francisco Courthouse. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love everything about photographing weddings here, but a splash of color really helps. Brides often ask me what color flowers work well at SF City Hall and my answer is always the same.... Anything but white! The goal here is to add color. The same with the men, boutonnieres can really set off the suit they might be wearing and make a huge difference. Other fun things for the guys to do is to wear colorful socks. Rainbow socks are very popular with our gay grooms and it makes for wonderful and fun wedding pictures. For our brides colorful shoes are also recommended and work perfectly here. At one recent wedding, the father of one of the brides wore Rainbow socks to honor the couple.
If you are having an after wedding party or reception in San Francisco be sure to allow enough lead time to arrive at your location after your city hall nuptials. We frequently end up rushing at the end of our photography shoots because the couple misjudged the amount of time it would take to complete their Courthouse ceremony and Photo tour. Remember that when you receive your ceremony time from the County Clerk, this isn't really when you are getting married. After your check-in at the Clerk's office you will first meet with your officiant. This meeting usually occurs close to your ceremony time and involves some instructions to the couple by the Marriage Commissioner and also the license signing takes place at this time. Your actual ceremony most likely will occur about 20 minutes after. So please allow plenty of cushion for your wedding activities and the fact that it takes a while to get around in San Francisco. We also think that the photo shoot will go a lot smoother if the newlyweds are not thinking about the potential of being late for their own wedding reception. In general, detailed planning of the full wedding day really helps the enjoyment of the entire day by all of the participants. Once you do the work ahead of time, you can then really enjoy your day and not have to worry anymore about the fine details.
Yes, this is a San Francisco city hall wedding photography website, but I wanted to explore some other options that are available to same-sex couples looking to get married in San Francisco. There are many great places to get married in addition to city hall. We can take you to many other fantastic SF Landmarks if you would like to consider other alternative ceremony locations. Lands End, Golden Gate Park, Sutro Baths, or one of many picturesque overlooks can be chosen. We can even arrange for a private officiant for you if given enough notice. Another option is to hire your own officiant for a city hall wedding ceremony. Civil ceremony reservations can book up fast, but you can still get married in this beautiful building by bring in your officiant. This may be especially important to people these days with Covid-19 concerns who want to stay outdoors. Return to our home page for other information about San Francisco city hall wedding photography.