Amy and Rishi had a magical wedding at the most beautiful building in San Francisco, City Hall! Being a photographer, I am drawn to symmetry and balance and as you can see from my aerial photographs below, it has perfect geometric shapes and balance. It is also historic and very beautiful inside and out. Being around Christmas time, the large tree is simply gorgeous and is a wonderful focal point in the rotunda where the festivities mainly took place.
We started the day with some portraits of the couple and their families before the groom headed outside for the Baraat. The weather was beautiful for the time of year and it started sprinkling just as we went inside for the start of the ceremony which was perfect timing.
The Mandap was staged at the foot of the large staircase and the traditional Hindu rituals were performed. After the ceremony, guests were ushered to the second floor where hors d’oeuvres and an open bar kept them entertained while the rotunda was set up with tables for the reception. When the downstairs area reopened guests mingled about and enjoyed taking photos in our photo booth while they awaited the grand entrance of the bride and groom.
Before the couple made their very grand entrance down the amazing staircase, we did a photo shoot with them on the second floor of city hall where there are nice hallways and private spots to take photos without the guests seeing them. We used the beautiful color of their uplighting our backdrop and used off camera flash as our main light to have a beautiful light source on their faces. We love lighting and this place is a lot of fun to shoot at!
With having multiple levels, City Hall opens up lots of creative possibilities to have shots from various angles that are normally not possible in typical ballrooms. We really like capturing the reception from the second floor because you get a nice birds eye view and everything looks really grand.
Night time shots in front of City Hall are especially cool because the city tends to light the city hall with different colors depending on the time of year or a theme, like red and gold for the 49ers etc. In this case, green and red for Christmas were the colors and we think the shot turned out great!
We wish Amy and Rishi the best and hope you enjoy checking out some of our favorite shots from their SF City Hall wedding.
