This image is not one you often see when it comes to City Hall wedding photography in San Francisco. It was actually captured while the couple was waiting to get their marriage license in the county clerk's office at City Hall. This area is often quite busy with people walking back and forth trying to take care of various legal matters. The County Clerk it's not just for marriage's but they also handle birth certificates, death certificates, and passports. Because of that, it's very difficult to get a picture like this without a lot of people in the background. UPDATE: With the County Clerk reopening following the Corona Virus Pandemic, it is no longer possible to obtain photos like this. City Hall has rightly limited access to this part of building for health and safety reasons. I still like the photo and will keep it posted, but I wanted to make sure people understood that at least for now, this shot cannot be duplicated.
I enjoy capturing photos like this because it helps tell the story of the day for the couple. When you get married at San Francisco City Hall there are a number of steps you have to complete in order to get to the ceremony. These details are covered in other parts of this website. To summarize, it involves first obtaining your marriage license and then you need to check in for your ceremony. After those two steps all you need to do is meet with the officiant and have your witness sign the marriage license. Once all these steps have been completed the bride and groom and guests all head to the Rotunda where the ceremony will take place. With this couple we thought it would be fun to capture all the different steps with wedding photographs. As mentioned, these types of photos are no longer possible, but we are keeping these shots up so you can see the process. Just because we cannot take photos of check-in anymore doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to see the steps you have to go through. For this wedding, we took pictures of the couple all along the way including when they went to the front desk at the county clerk to check in. As you can see from the photo above they were a very happy couple and really enjoyed all aspects of their wedding photography session. Similar to all of our city hall couples, once the ceremony was complete we took them on a photo tour of the building and covered all four floors. Our Next Step was to take them to the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco where we obtained additional romantic images of both of them. It was a lovely day and we had such a great time with this couple. We finished up at Fort Point to obtain some amazing Golden Gate Bridge pictures. This couple was really committed to receiving the best possible wedding photography coverage, including some major aspects of San Francisco beauty and romance. Even though it is a bit of a time commitment, the results are worthwhile. I would also add that this couple went all out on their attire as well. The groom wearing a very smart tuxedo and the bride wearing a tea length dress with beautiful flowers.
