{"id":277,"date":"2026-01-07T00:29:37","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T00:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/?p=277"},"modified":"2026-01-07T00:29:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T00:29:38","slug":"engagement-portraits-city-hall-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/engagement-portraits-city-hall-wedding\/","title":{"rendered":"Engagement Portraits before your San Francisco City Hall Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of our San Francisco City Hall wedding couples<\/a><\/strong> like us to photograph a formal engagement portrait session prior to their marriage.\u00a0 We can create a photography package for any couple that includes a San Francisco engagement session at our popular city destinations.\u00a0 You can also keep the packages separate if you prefer. Our most popular San Francisco location for Engagement Sessions continues to be The Palace of Fine Arts, but there are many others that are fantastic and equally iconic.\u00a0

We take our engaged couples to Russian\u00a0 Hill, North Beach, Sutro Baths, The Presidio, Golden Gate Park,\u00a0 and the Legion of Honor to name just a few.\u00a0 Believe it or not, we even sometimes do our engagement sessions at San Francisco City Hall! Yes, we have had couples want both their engagement session and wedding photos at SF City Hall. In fact, we just recently did a fantastic engagement session and City Hall and I will posting this on the website soon.\u00a0 Many of these Engagement Portrait sessions are booked at SF City Hall ala carte. Whatever works best for our couples is fine with us!\u00a0 For some, that is all they want.<\/p>\n

We actually now offer a specific package for city hall weddings that includes a 2 hour engagement session on a separate day before your wedding date.\u00a0 For details on this combination package,\u00a0 click this City Hall Engagement Package link<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 This package provides you with a substantial discount since it combines 2 separate photography sessions into one complete and affordable package. We give you some credit for booking 2 days with us and this saves you money!\u00a0 The actual savings is around $200 for combining these both into one wedding photography package.<\/p>\n

Engagement Portrait Session in Marin County<\/h3>\n

One of our more recent engagement shoots occurred in Marin County at Cavallo Point<\/a><\/strong> close to Sausalito, California.\u00a0 This was a fantastic location for the session especially with it’s unique angles to the Golden Gate bridge and an amazing view of San Francisco.\u00a0 In the image below, we placed our future City Hall bride and groom on\u00a0 the Break Water with the bridge in the background.\u00a0 It was about 1 hour before sunset when we set this up.\u00a0

The Golden Gate Bridge takes on a completely different look from the Marin side of the Bay.\u00a0 You just can’t get this type of view of the bridge from the San Francisco side. There are certainly equally beautiful photo opportunities on the SF side, but this is unique view only present from Cavallo Point.\u00a0 Of course the sun positioning also completely changes and makes this a great location for late afternoon City Hall engagement sessions.<\/p>\n

What I particularly like about this angle is the fact that it looks almost like you are to the side of the bridge as opposed to looking down the bridge.\u00a0 It is probably one of the most side views of the Golden Gate, without being on a boat out on the water.\u00a0 I also like that there is such an expanse of water between the couple and the bridge.\u00a0 Again, this type of look is not available from San Francisco due the different angles available.\u00a0 In most cases for San Francisco portrait sessions, you are looking down the bridge at an angle.\u00a0 This side view is great for photos and really shows off the size of the bridge. I also think it shows the golden colors better. A nice low sun position will really enhance the light on the bridge. Here are some other thoughts and opinions regarding Golden Gate Bridge photography<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Golden<\/p>\n

Golden Gate Bridge from Cavallo Point<\/span><\/p>\n

From this angle we found a great looking cliff that was right up against the San Francisco Bay.\u00a0 We placed our couple up on the cliff and took a series of images of them with a few different suggested poses.\u00a0 Then we just let them do whatever they wanted to.\u00a0 Of course, those were the best captures.\u00a0 The couple just posed naturally and did as they pleased while enjoying the beautiful SF Bay scenery.\u00a0 Check out this amazing location in the photo below. You can even faintly see the San Francisco Bay Bridge in the background.\u00a0 Photos like these are only possible if you have an adventurous couple who are not afraid of heights!\u00a0 This couple was up for the challenge and it made for a memorable photo that they will always treasure.<\/p>\n

\"Engagement
Engagement portrait session overlooking San Francisco<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We finished up our shoot in the bar at the Cavallo Point Lodge.\u00a0 A very cute bar and one of our couple’s favorites. It turned out that this bar was one of their favorite stopping points over the past few years.\u00a0 So it was the perfect place to finish up their Engagement Portrait session.\u00a0 We also found the time to have a drink with them, which is a nice way to get to know a couple before shooting there wedding.\u00a0 By the time we got around to their scheduled Civil Ceremony, we were quite comfortable with them.\u00a0

We enjoyed photographing their San Francisco City Hall wedding in May of 2018. UPDATE: We photographed their wedding in May as mentioned and it was an amazing marriage with the bride wearing an incredible dress. They also loved their engagement portraits and were very glad they deciding to pursue this option.\u00a0 Check out our home page wedding gallery to find these photos. To see more images of SF city hall weddings and engagement sessions click on our City Hall Gallery Link<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Cavallo
Cavallo Point Lodge bar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
\n
\"San
city hall wedding photography on the Grand Staircase<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of our San Francisco City Hall wedding couples like us to photograph a formal engagement portrait session prior to their marriage.\u00a0 We can create a photography package for any couple that includes a San Francisco engagement session at our popular city destinations.\u00a0 You can also keep the packages separate if you prefer. Our most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,29,25,5],"tags":[52,384,386,330,332,331,232,389,390,391,54,53,55],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city-hall","category-photography","category-san-francisco","category-weddings","tag-cityhallweddings","tag-courthousewedding","tag-courthouseweddingpictures","tag-engagementsession","tag-goldentgatebridge","tag-marincounty","tag-sanfranciscocityhallweddingphotographer","tag-townhallwedding","tag-townhallweddingphotography","tag-townhallweddings","tag-weddingphotographer","tag-weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall","tag-weddingphotography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","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=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3645,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/3645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingphotographersanfranciscocityhall.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}