Navigating the SF City Hall Guest Limit

We have already discussed the 6 guest limit at San Francisco city hall in other blog posts, but it is worth further mentioning again because there is so much uncertainty regarding this rule. To refresh your memory, the County Clerk’s office began to enforce the 6 guest limit effective May, 2019. To read more about this please go to our SF City Hall Wedding Photography Website. You might ask, how can City Hall tell me how many people to bring to a public building? The answer is, they can not. Anyone is free to walk into the building and as long as they are not disruptive, the County Clerk’s office can do nothing about it. However, what they CAN do is limit the number of these wandering guests that can view your ceremony close by.

This may seem harsh, but there is good reason. San Francisco city hall is a place of business and people have to work there with minimal disruption. The Board of Supervisors meet here on a regular basis and of course the Mayor’s office is here too. Loud, celebrating wedding guests can turn the building into a very difficult place to hold some of these official proceedings. Standard SF City Hall civil ceremonies are held in the Rotunda which just happens to be right next to the Board of Supervisors. For this reason, effective July of 2021 (the reopening date) city hall began to enforce these limits more than ever. I believe part of this was a response to the potential risks still facing the public because of the Pandemic at that time. However, recently, this has begun to change. The 6 guest limit is now being enforced inconsistently and often depends upon the individual Marriage Commissioner. Read further in this post for more details about this.

County Clerk Alternative Locations

Of course the County Clerk and it’s marriage commissioners recognize that this can be an awkward situation. The fact is, couples getting married at City Hall will frequently bring more than the maximum of 6 guests. In some cases the couple honestly do not know about the restriction and so they invite too many people. Other couples know full well about the rule but figure they will find a way around it. Many of these couples will ask their city hall wedding photographers for ideas on how to get away with having a larger group of guests. City Hall has to deal with both of these problems without actually kicking people out of the building. After all, it is the bride and groom’s wedding day!

So how does the County Clerk’s office handle it? Answer: It depends. At this point in time city hall no longer banishes weddings with over 6 guests to the Private Room to get married. This was the original way to handle weddings with many guests. Now, other arrangements might be made or alternative locations might be suggested. The Private room isn’t so bad, but it is being used less and less these days. Is this a terrible place to celebrate your nuptials? Of course not. It is actually a very nice room and was recently redecorated to make it look more like a place to get married. But again, with the Pandemic still fresh in everyone’s minds, I have to wonder if this will still be a viable option. Groups of 16 or less can fit in the room without too much problem, but is it safe? Don’t worry, Brides and grooms sent to this room can still use the rest of the building later for pictures or wandering around.

Marriage Commissioners Often Take Matters into Their Own Hands

Some Marriage Commissioners will take their couples with too many guests to the 4th floor which is out of the way and a pretty large area. There even may be a few alternative locations that even I don’t know about. What really makes this whole situation challenging is the lack of consistency among the various Marriage Commissioners. Keep in mind that these officiants are volunteers, they don’t actually work directly for San Francisco city hall. For this reason, I think that some of them will often do things their own way to some extent. Just recently (September, 2023) we covered a wedding with close to 20 guests. The officiant didn’t bat an eyelash and allowed the couple’s entire wedding party inside the Rotunda to watch. Nobody said a word and everything went smoothly. Fortunately, the guests behaved and were not too loud. This was suggested to them by both the wedding photographer (me) and the officiant.

Marriage Recommendations

So what should you do if you have too many wedding guests that want to come to your city hall civil ceremony? There are a few options and ideas I will run down below. Please keep in mind that these are only suggestions, I am not making up new rules nor am I encouraging couples to break existing ones. Read below to check out my suggestions.

• Follow the rules and only bring 6 guests
  
• Bring a few extra guests but let some of them know that they can’t watch the ceremony. They can wait in the wings and then be available for family photos after the ceremony is complete.
  
• Bring a larger group and just understand that you will be getting married in an alternative location. It really isn’t the worse thing and as mentioned, does not prevent you from walking around city hall after the ceremony for pictures.
  
• Personally, I think the best alternative for couples with many guests (over 20) is to pay to rent out one of the reserved ceremony areas. For $1,000 you can have your marriage performed inside this beautiful building with a private ceremony. They rope off the area and keep tourists and other people out. Your guests can even sit down! Yes, $1000 sounds like a lot, but not compared to typical San Francisco wedding venues. The fact is, City Hall wedding are very affordable overall.

Do Wedding Photographers Count as a Guest?

I get this question quite often. The SF city hall website says that the 6 guest limit INCLUDES your wedding photographer. So if you are going strictly by the rules having a your own photographer limits your guest list to 5! The only thing I can tell you is that in 12 years, I have never had city hall wedding officiant tell me that I had to leave the ceremony because I was the 7th person. It’s not surprising to understand why!