{"id":155,"date":"2025-10-25T22:59:37","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T22:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/?p=155"},"modified":"2025-10-25T22:59:39","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T22:59:39","slug":"christmas-wedding-at-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/christmas-wedding-at-city-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Wedding Photography at SF City Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

With October well under say and November just around the corner, it is time to book your Christmas\u00a0 wedding at San Francisco City Hall. It is always a wonderful time and the building is always very busy and the giant Christmas tree becomes the center point of this great wedding venue. Wedding photography at San Francisco city hall<\/a><\/strong> is made so easy during this time of the year, because almost everyone wants pictures in front of the tree.\u00a0 \u00a0For the past few years the tree has been decorated with Origami which makes for a very unique look.\u00a0 In addition, when evening comes the light reflects off of the Origami and creates patterns on the walls at city hall.\u00a0 It’s a pretty amazing and unexpected scene. UPDATE: They have recently stopped using the origami tree but the one they’re using now is beautiful as well.<\/p>\n

We are already scheduled to photograph 5 weddings in 2025 during the Christmas season and we are very much looking forward to it.\u00a0 We expect more Christmas bookings to come soon since 2025 has been a busy year for us. It will be great to finish off the year with a lot of weddings during the Christmas season at SF City Hall.\u00a0 With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to look at this wedding from the past during the holiday season.<\/p>\n

\"Bridal
Bridal Portrait by the 3rd floor North Window<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Christmas Wedding at SF City Hall<\/h2>\n

We started our formal wedding photograph shoot on the 3rd floor because city hall was pretty crowded and we were having trouble finding places without people in the background. This is rare, but at certain times of the week during the busy season, it can happen.\u00a0 This particular wedding was on a Friday which is definitely one of the most crowded days of the week at City Hall.\u00a0 We have learned over the years where and when to take our brides and grooms once things get crowded.\u00a0 The 3rd floor is one of those places which provides some privacy and less strangers in the background of our photos!\u00a0 A lot of city hall newbie Wedding photographers\u00a0 don’t even know about the 3rd floor and how beautiful the lighting is there.\u00a0 This makes it an ideal hideaway to utilize on busy Fridays.\u00a0 Especially during the Christmas season when most of the floors are being utilized by other newlyweds for photos.\u00a0 The plan is always to make our way to the other locations, but we do it when we see that things are slowing down in that particular area. San Francisco city hall wedding photography requires that you keep track of where the best places are to go to avoid the crowds, especially on Fridays when it is most busy. As we have said before and in this other blog post, the best SF City Hall wedding photographers<\/a><\/strong> know how to handle these issues. Please check out this other blog post to learn more about that<\/p>\n

\"Wedding
Wedding Kiss at City Hall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Christmas Tree Wedding Pictures are a Must!<\/h2>\n

Once we completed our time on the 3rd floor, we headed back down to the Christmas Tree to get a few nice shots.\u00a0 Again, there were people everywhere and virtually no room to photograph the couple in the traditional place facing the Rotunda.\u00a0 Fortunately, we have alternative angles into the tree that is off to the side.\u00a0 Even though it’s a pretty obvious angle, many photographers without experience at\u00a0 San Francisco city hall don’t know about it.\u00a0 We\u00a0 were able to get some fairly private images in front of the tree before moving on to our next location. I also prefer this side of the tree, because the lighting is usually better.\u00a0 I can use my off-camera flash more easily on the side than I can from straight on. The main advantage is no people in the background.<\/p>\n

\"Christmas
Christmas tree with bride and groom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For this wedding, we spent over 1.5 hours at San Francisco city hall touring around taking photos and having fun with the newlyweds.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Sometimes this can be the only time to take pictures on this incredible floor! Timing is everything, but it also pays to keep watching for the right moments.<\/p>\n

\"Golden
Golden Gate Bridge with Wedding Couple<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once we completed our San Francisco City Hall photo tour, we drove the couple to Fort Point to get some professional wedding pictures\u00a0 with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.\u00a0 The couple’s family also showed up at Fort Point allowing us to include them in many of the photos.\u00a0 It was a fantastic way to end our day with beautiful weather and a clear view of the bridge with no fog.<\/p>\n

Update:\u00a0 The County Clerks office has now changed Christmas ceremonies to the 3rd floor instead of in front of the tree.\u00a0 Brides and grooms can still take plenty of pictures in front of the Christmas Tree after the ceremony.\u00a0 Part of the reason for moving the ceremony was\u00a0 for religious or cultural reasons. Not everyone wants the Christmas tree in the background and this allows people to choose! The other reason is that having the tree in the way provides a lot less room for the ceremony and comes too close to the steps. So I really believe this is also a safety concern. I know I nearly backed up too far a couple of times and stepped partially of the stairs. The new setup is perfect both for wedding photographers and newlyweds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With October well under say and November just around the corner, it is time to book your Christmas\u00a0 wedding at San Francisco City Hall. It is always a wonderful time and the building is always very busy and the giant Christmas tree becomes the center point of this great wedding venue. Wedding photography at San…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,29,25,5],"tags":[323,267,324,254,52,232,283,389,390,54,325,53,55],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city-hall","category-photography","category-san-francisco","category-weddings","tag-christmascityhall","tag-cityhall","tag-cityhallchristmas","tag-cityhallwedding","tag-cityhallweddings","tag-sanfranciscocityhallweddingphotographer","tag-sfcityhall","tag-townhallwedding","tag-townhallweddingphotography","tag-weddingphotographer","tag-weddingphotographersanfrancisco","tag-weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall","tag-weddingphotography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3460,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/3460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}