Depending on how you are scheduling your ceremony at San Francisco City Hall and how many hours you book your photographer for, will determine when you should arrive and take couples portraits. This couple hired me for 2 hours. Since we knew they were having a pretty good amount of guests for their ceremony and were planning on spending time with them but didn’t need event coverage after, we decided it was a good idea to start their portraits an hour before the ceremony and spend the remaining hour capturing them interacting with their family, having their ceremony,  taking family formals and few images outside of city hall. All of which fills  up the last hour really fast.

Once in a while, I will do a 2-hour session with couples who want images at a second location and will not have any guests attending. To time the locations right, you need to take in a few factors. What time is your ceremony? Will city hall be less busy before or after your ceremony and what time is the sun setting? If your ceremony is in the morning I highly suggest getting to city hall right when they open and utilizing the hall for portraits before other couples and tourists show up. If your ceremony is already in the afternoon and we will be doing outdoor images say near the beach we will want to make sure we can wait as long as possible before going to the beach for the best light. In that case, I would say we meet at ceremony time, do city hall images then head over to the beach.

To get those grand staircase shots and utilize city hall without many people in the hall, we need to be there on off hours. That means we meet before city hall opens and start shooting as soon as they open. Or we shoot a few hours after the ceremonies by their judges have ceased.  Your next question!  “What If I have my ceremony is set for 2:30 pm and we want to do couples portraits at 8 am to have fewer people in the hall? We can! I have incorporated a small fee per hour that I charge while I am idle to make it possible to do just this!

If you are interested reach out and I’d love to chat about it and your San Francisco City Hall Wedding!