San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photographers
Looking for affordable San Francisco city hall wedding photographers for your elopement? Mike and Bianca are one of the leading wedding photography teams at SF City Hall with over 12 years of experience and 800 marriages creatively photographed. We know the best places and secret spots at this historic building to provide our newlyweds with amazing photographic memories. If you are planning an elopement or even a formal wedding, SF City Hall is the place! For more information about our San Francisco city hall wedding photography service including helpful guides and prices, click below. You can BOOK US now to be your wedding photographer by clicking the link. You will see no strangers in your city hall wedding pictures!
Click to see our Full SF City Hall Wedding Menu
Experienced San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photographers
As a native San Franciscan with over 20 years of experience as a highly rated professional wedding photographer, Mike Dubnoff is uniquely qualified to cover your City Hall nuptials and elopement. Our expert Stylist, Bianca joins Mike to assist you with all aspects of your wedding day at San Francisco City Hall. Bianca is also fluent in Spanish, so feel free to book us if that would be helpful to you. Se habla espanol! No matter what photography options you select, we will help make your wedding day at San Francisco city hall fun and memorable.
We pride ourselves in offering one of the widest varieties of wedding photography packages and options available for Courthouse Elopements. All of this at affordable prices with great value for your money. Need help with SF City Hall wedding planning? We can help you with that too! This website was also designed to provide brides and groom with detailed and helpful information about how to get married at San Francisco City Hall. We offer so much more than just wedding photoshoots! Your entire SF City Hall wedding experience can be planned from this website.
Here are our Full Wedding City Hall Photo Galleries for you to View
No Limit SF City Hall Wedding Photographers
We never limit the amount of images captured taken during your City Hall wedding photoshoot. We make sure that you receive full value for the price you pay for each and every photography package. All image files accurately captured will be delivered to our Newlyweds with no extra charge. You receive all the image files and we never stop shooting during your wedding and our premium SF City Hall photo tour! Be sure to check with other professional city hall wedding photographers before booking to make sure they do not hold back some of your precious images. Clients frequently ask us how many images will be included with each price and package. We definitely provide you with estimates, but also promise that we will cover everything that occurs throughout the day. You will receive every magical moment captured on our cameras. This includes plenty of candid and fun photos to go along with your posed wedding pictures.
Have Fun on Your City Hall Wedding Day!
Making sure you receive the best city hall wedding pictures possible is obviously most important, but Bianca and Mike will also always try to make your day fun! We promise not to dominate your wedding day with photography. Yes, it is our job to make sure you receive wonderful memories through pictures, but it is also important that you have a fun time. We understand that your marriage day is not just about wedding photography. We will be actively involved in making sure you obtain amazing photos, but will do it in an unobtrusive manner. We also are happy to listen to your suggestions about the type of wedding photography styles you prefer. Please let us know if there are specific areas in San Francisco city hall you want us not to miss! We have no problem involving you preeminently in the process. Feel free to work with us to make this the best experience possible! If you prefer to not be too involved, that is fine too. We definitely know all of the best places in San Francisco city hall to take our newlyweds for wedding pictures!
How To Book Us To Be Your SF City Hall Wedding Photographer
If you are ready to book us to be the photographer for your SF City Hall wedding, it can be done quite easily and quickly. If you already know the photography package you want to choose, then all you have to do is contact us and we will send you a contract. Our contract is simple to read and contains all the information you need to book us, including how to make the deposit and subsequent payments. If you are still not sure which package is the best fit for your city hall marriage, please go to our San Francisco City Hall Prices page. There you will find important booking information and also package details. Listed below is a step-by-step guide to booking us to be your San Francisco City Hall wedding photographer.
- Choose your preferred City Hall wedding photography package. We provide many options.
- Contact us through email, phone, or use our convenient contact form.
- In most cases we will send your contract the same day with full instructions.
- Complete the photography contract and return it to us by email or regular mail.
- Send us the deposit using PayPal, Zelle, or Venmo. The contract will provide instructions.
- Wait to receive confirmation from us that your City Hall wedding date has been booked.
- That's it, you are all set!
Our San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photography Tour
All of our SF city hall wedding coverage includes our special photography tour around the building. This normally occurs after your Civil Ceremony or Reserved wedding at San Francisco City Hall. We provide photographic coverage for your ceremony followed immediately by pictures of your guests and friends in attendance. We make sure these group photos are captured correctly and with beautiful backgrounds. We realize how important your family and friends are to you so pay close attention to details on this part of your wedding celebration.
Once we complete the ceremony pictures and family portraits, we take you on a grand photo tour of all 4 floors of this historic building. We do not rush you through this and try to make sure you are enjoying the experience the entire time at San Francisco city hall. We help pose you and choose the best backgrounds with an emphasis on the beautiful architecture surrounding us. Listed below are some of the places we take our newlyweds on the City Hall Photo Tour.
List of our Favorite SF City Hall Photography Locations
- Mayor's Balcony - Great lighting with decent privacy. Sometimes closed off for private ceremonies.
- 4th Floor North Gallery - the most spectacular location for perfect light. Gorgeous photography.
- Grand Staircase - Beautiful backdrop, everyone's favorite. Can get super crowded on Fridays!
- Rotunda - Just OK for wedding photography, but fantastic for city hall ceremonies.
- Third Floor North - Some of the best portrait lighting ever! North facing windows!
- Third Floor South - Direct sun, good for special effects and "wow" shots.
- 2nd Floor Hallway - Fantastic repeating lines with beautiful lamp lighting down the row.
- 2nd Floor Ramp - Beautiful natural framing with gorgeous back light.
How to Choose the Best SF City Hall Wedding Photographers
The internet is full of articles with the intention of helping the bride and groom choose the best professional San Francisco city hall wedding photographers. We thought it would be helpful to look at it from a different perspective and help engaged couples avoid some of the most common mistakes people make when choosing a wedding photography studio for this very important task. The emphasis should not only be about choosing the best, but making sure you receive good value for the price you pay. Your wedding is one of the most important days of your lives so you need to make the right choice, but also keep the cost affordable. Here is a list of things you should not do when choosing experienced SF city hall wedding photographers:
1. Relying on Vendor Referrals - In general, most wedding and event vendors will try to provide you with an honest photographer referral when asked. The problem is that in most cases, these well meaning vendors really don't possess enough personal knowledge of your service to make an informed and accurate recommendation. For example, I know a DJ who often refers me to his customers but has never even seen any of my images and has no idea how much my packages cost. He knows that I am pleasant to work with and polite to my customers, but hasn't personally seen one of my City Hall wedding albums or digital images. Even more disturbing is the fact that a very large number of event vendors trade referrals with no real knowledge of the other's work. This is a common ploy among wedding vendors to help each other out.
You are much better off talking to actual San Francisco brides and grooms who have worked with professional wedding photographers. In most cases, the couples are happy to share their experiences with you in an honest and straightforward way. They can also tell you how much they paid for the services, which if very helpful.
2. Judging a Photographer Based Solely on a "Greatest Hits" Album. There is nothing more misleading than choosing a San Francisco city hall photographer based upon viewing a compilation of their best pictures from dozens of different photoshoots. At the very least, this may tell you how good a photo they are capable of producing under ideal circumstances, but it tells you nothing about what your final result will be for an entire wedding. Insist on seeing one complete marriage and make sure they show you a large number of images. This will provide you with a much better idea of the style and quality of the best photographer's work. To be honest, just about any wedding photographer can show you 1 or 2 great photos from each wedding.
3. Ignoring the Wedding Photographer's Personality. This is a very important factor! You will spend the entire day with your San Francisco city hall wedding photographers, if you don't like him or her, it could make your special day miserable. You are looking for a person who is courteous, not bossy and will get along well with your guests. Obviously, they need to be talented and experienced, but don't ignore their potential for bad or rude behavior. An ability to handle stress and yet stay pleasant is the key to a great wedding shooter. Some local SF city hall photographers will tell you that they are like a "fly on the wall" at your event and you will never even know they are there. This is probably not the best choice for a couple who wants to make sure they get all the important and memorable shots. In reality, you probably want a combination of both of these attributes.
4. Paying Too Much Attention to the Sales Presentation. Just about any experienced San Francisco city hall wedding photographer can go on and on about why they are the perfect choice for you. They can talk about their great equipment and show you beautiful images. They may even impress you with their sparkling personality and tell you about their "vision" for your wedding pictures. This is all important stuff, but how much does it really tell you about the person and what they are offering you in particular? A good business professional will ask you questions and find out what YOU want in your wedding photography. What kind of photography budget do you have? What are some of most important things you want in your wedding pictures? If they spend the entire sales presentation preaching to you, it could also be that they don't really care about your own needs and preferences. Seek out affordable city hall wedding photographers who ask you lots of questions with the goal of discovering what YOUR vision of the wedding is.
5. Confusion Over City Hall Wedding Packages and Pricing. If you can't understand the pricing, keep looking for other affordable city hall wedding photographers. Package pricing, if it's flexible, is a solid way to go. It provides you a better idea of what the ultimate cost will be without any final invoice surprises. A la carte pricing can be misleading because you may assume certain "obvious" items are included when they really aren't (like a wedding album or black and white pictures!) However, a company that only offers strictly structured packages without some flexibility should also be avoided.
Ultimately, you want to find someone who will work within your budget guidelines and provide you exactly what you want and make it affordable. If you don't see an inexpensive wedding photography package that fits your needs, ask if you can design your own. Probably about 30% of my customers ask me to modify one of my existing packages or prices to fit their personal preferences. We are happy to do this because our main goal is to make sure we are satisfying the needs of our San Francisco city hall brides and grooms. Forcing a client into choosing a wedding package unsuitable for them accomplishes nothing. If your chosen City Hall wedding photographer refuses to offer custom packages, move on and keep looking. It might also be a clue to the type of person you are dealing with if they don't have some flexibility. Your wedding photographer needs to be flexible and understanding.
How do I Plan my San Francisco City Hall Wedding?
San Francisco City Hall is a beautiful destination for planning your wedding ceremony. It's affordable, convenient, and available throughout the year. Planning your marriage at City Hall will take you a lot less time compared to a typical wedding, but there are still a number of things you will have to do ahead of time. The article below will help you efficiently plan your nuptials at SF City Hall. We have also provided you with the City Hall's Civil Ceremony general information site which shows you how to book your ceremony time/date and your marriage license appointment. For a City Hall Wedding detailed step-by-step Planning guide please click the link.
Preparing for your SF City Hall Wedding
Make sure you have made the appropriate appointments with San Francisco City Hall. You will need to book both your Marriage License appointment and the actual ceremony time. These 2 appointments can be made on consecutive days or on the same day at least an hour apart. You can make both of these appointments from the San Francisco city hall website. These appointments can be made up to 90 days in advance and will cost just over $200 for both reservations. A Deputy Marriage Commissioner will be assigned to you on the day of your wedding.
Suggestions for Your Actual Wedding Day
We feel that a nice bouquet for the bride or brides does wonders for the City Hall interior pictures. The splash of color adds a nice touch to the monotone backgrounds. We also suggest you bring snacks and water, especially for Summer weddings at SF City Hall. Comfortable walking shoes for the bride is also a strong recommendation. On the day of the wedding, make sure to allow enough time to get through San Francisco traffic, parking, and City Hall Security. We can begin your City Hall wedding photography session when you arrive or after the ceremony. Just let us know in advance how you want to handle the photography timing. We are flexible and accommodating and will work around your wedding day
Free Advice for your SF City Hall Wedding
We have provided invaluable information for navigating your way through the entire matrimonial process at SF city hall. This includes obtaining your marriage license and booking your ceremony date and time. We can provide you with answers to many of the frequently asked questions that we hear from our brides and grooms. Our multiple years of experience shooting weddings at city hall has provided us with mountains of useful information that we would love to share with you. This is offered at no cost to you and no obligation to book your wedding photography with us!
We love this venue so much that we are willing to provide you this assistance and all you have to do is email us and ask us anything about how to get married at SF City Hall. We pride ourselves in helping engaged couples learn how to have a successful wedding at San Francisco City Hall. Despite the comparative simplicity of a civil ceremony, there are still a number of issues that come up and we are happy to impart our knowledge to you. If you would like to book Dubnoff Wedding Photography for your City Hall marriage please go to our San Francisco City Hall Prices page. There you will find important information about reserving us and also package details.
Book a Professional SF City Hall Wedding Photographer
In addition to these types of preparations, it's also important to book a professional wedding photographer. Why get married at one of San Francisco's most beautiful venues and not have a top notch wedding photographer taking pictures. I am always surprised when I see brides and grooms at SF city hall and their friend is doing a wedding photo shoot with a cell phone! To be honest, there are some floors with this just won't work well. For example, try using a cell phone on the Mayor's Balcony looking towards the Rotunda. You could end up with Silhouettes!
We hope you choose us to be your City Hall wedding photographers, but the most important thing is that you book someone professional! The second thing I would suggest is that you book a photographer with experience at this particular venue. When I think about all that I have learned over the past 12 years working here, I realize that SF City Hall wedding photography is very challenging and not for beginners. Hire a professional because it would be a shame not to capture all of the beauty surrounding you on your wedding day.
How to Have the Best Wedding at San Francisco City Hall
We are one of the most experienced and helpful professional San Francisco city hall elopement photographers and we are happy to assist you with any of your planning needs. Throughout this website, you will find useful information about San Francisco city hall weddings and marriage planning tips. We go beyond just being your wedding photographer, we offer specific details to help you navigate the entire civil marriage process.
Of course, we also realize that the main reason you are at this website is to find the best SF City Hall wedding photographers you can. With that in mind, you will want to see our wedding photography galleries and view our featured portfolios. We probably have a gallery that comes close to fitting your own style for this most important day. It's fun to see a wedding that closely mirrors your own plans for your special day. So be sure to read the detailed descriptions to help you decide which weddings to view. The best way to choose your city hall wedding photographer is to look for poses and backgrounds that speak to you. First impressions DO matter! Bold colors, dramatic poses and great architecture are all things that should be present in city hall wedding photography.
Try Our San Francisco Wedding Photography Tour
In addition to our regular professional wedding photography coverage at City Hall, we also offer packages that take you to various locations throughout the San Francisco after we finish. We call these our San Francisco Tour Packages and offer 3 levels of photographic coverage. After your city hall wedding, feel free to choose to visit 1, 2, or 3 additional San Francisco destinations for more wedding photography. We will join you at any of the fantastic and highly rated picture locations in San Francisco and provide you with a multitude of creative wedding images. We will also provide optional comfortable transportation for your SF photo tour at no cost to you! We will happily escort you to picturesque SF destinations such as:
- The Golden Gate Bridge
- Russian Hill - North Beach
- The Palace of Fine Arts
- The Japanese Tea Gardens
- The Legion of Honor
- Twin Peaks
- Crissy Fields
- SF Downtown - Bay Bridge
- Botanical Gardens - GG Park
- Sutro Baths and Park
- Baker Beach
- Fort Point - GG Bridge
- Coit Tower
You Can Choose Your Favorite SF Photoshoot Locations
The list above includes just a few of our favorites. We are more than happy to allow you to choose the San Francisco locations you prefer or we can help you decide. One of the things we do for the longer tour packages is try to arrange the destinations in some logical order to minimize driving time. Obviously, doing this also maximizes wedding photography time. After we cover your City Hall wedding and take you around San Francisco, we can then capture great moments at your reception as an additional option. You can either add reception coverage to your tour package or you can replace the locations with it instead. Reception coverage offers the best opportunities to obtain candid images that reveal the special moments at your celebration. For more useful information about full-day wedding coverage click the link.
Same-Sex LGBTQ+ Wedding Photographers at SF City Hall
We have been photographing Same-Sex weddings at City Hall since they were first made legal back in 2013. We were one of the first wedding photographers to focus on helping couples from the LGBTQ+ community celebrate their long term commitments to each other (and make it legal). Many of the first group of couples we photographed had been together for over 30 years. They finally were getting the chance to receive the benefits that other married couples enjoyed. We had a pretty amazing 2 years of photographing backlogged LGBTQ marriages and it was a great experience to be involved in their legal unions. Obviously, Gay and Lesbian marriages have slowed down a bit now, but we still are actively involved in assisting this community with their San Francisco City Hall celebrations. We have a page on this site dedicated to only Same-Sex marriage photos if you are interested in learning more.
Popular SF City Hall Wedding Photographers at a Discount
Why You Receive More For Your Money at a SF City Hall Wedding
Other Options For Your SF City Hall Wedding Day
There are quite a few other options for having your wedding at SF City Hall besides the $120 Civil Ceremony. There is nothing stopping you from putting together a small group of your friends and relatives and hiring your own officiant. Your ceremony may not be completely private, but you will be getting married at this spectacular venue and you do not even need a reservation. As your wedding photographer, we can help you find a great spot in the building with decent privacy that is also great for photos! We have worked with many couples and helped them find a private area for both their private civil ceremony and the wedding photography after. We can also help you with referrals to some of the top city hall officiants to perform your nuptials. Most of our referrals also wear the San Francisco city hall judge's robes. Note: They are actually not judges, but they sure look like it! These super nice officiants are all volunteers! They officiate your city hall nuptials because they love doing it.
Reserved Weddings at San Francisco City Hall
However, if you do want a a truly private wedding ceremony you can rent out the Mayor's Balcony or 4th Floor North Gallery for $1,000. Both of these reserved ceremony locations provide you with comfortable chairs for your guests to sit at. You are allowed to bring up to 40 guests for the Mayor's balcony and 60 on the 4th Floor. The entire area is roped off for privacy. Yes, you pay more for a private ceremony, but try to match that price anywhere in the city. It's not possible! To find out more about reserving these private ceremony locations, you can check out the City Hall Events Office. This reservation can be made up to one year in advance of your wedding day at City Hall. Keep in mind that you will also still need to hire your own wedding officiant. Prices for private officiants range from $200 to $350 approximately. As mentioned above, we can help with this and we can also advise you on music options as well. Plan on spending an additional $500 - $600 for music and an officiant combined.
Featured City Hall Wedding Gallery for April - 2024
Click the Photo Below for our Featured Wedding Gallery of the month - April and Michael SF Photo Tour
What is Our SF City Hall Wedding Photography Style
No doubt you have explored many San Francisco City Hall photographer's websites and have noted the differences in style. The vast variety available among the top SF city hall photographers is pretty amazing. We are often asked how we would define our own style. Many of our clients tell us that they booked us because we stood out from the other photographers they had looked at. Our photos are super sharp and technically correct. They especially emphasize the beautiful architecture present in the building. Not that we are clearly better then the rest, just different. Our philosophy, which has lead us to photographing well over 800 San Francisco City Hall weddings in the past 12 years focuses on architecture and the newlyweds. We always feature the newlyweds preeminently, but never ignore the Beautiful Beau-Arts architecture that is present throughout the building.
Our Focus is on San Francisco City Hall Architecture
As mentioned above, ff you compare our photographic work to other studios you will note that our images tend to show off the details and the beauty of the building itself. Taking nothing away from the Bride and Groom, because we make sure they are prominently featured. However, when browsing our portfolio galleries you may notice more wide angle shots and images that display the patterns present in this type of French architecture. If you love the unique beauty of this grand old historic building, we are a great option to choose as your SF city hall wedding photographer! When we take you and your new spouse on our City Hall wedding photo tour, we will stop at all of our favorite spots and take wide angle pictures, which will show off the beautiful backgrounds. In each case, we will also capture some close up shots to really highlight the newlyweds.
Complete Editing is Included in all of your Wedding Photos
Do you want strangers in your wedding pictures? Of course not and you never will with us! We feel that it is important to provide our brides and grooms a wide variety of city hall wedding pictures to choose from. We also supply our couples with a large number of proofs to look at after their wedding day. However, all of these shots are hand selected and carefully edited. We do not just throw every wedding picture at you and hope some stick! Each and every digital image file you receive from us will be fully edited with no city hall strangers in the background. Our photo editing includes color correction, exposure correction and cropping. Best of all, you get to keep ALL of the wedding pictures we take on your special day at SF City Hall!
City Hall Wedding Photography Hint of the Month
The Month of April, 2024 - With April here, the weather is starting to warm up and we even more excited to take our brides and groom out into San Francisco for wedding pictures. We notice an increase in the number SF City Hall Weddings during April and it can make things a bit more crowded in the building. Make sure to book us soon before our schedule fills up. To reserve your wedding date please go to the City Hall Reservation page. You no longer need to worry about it getting dark inside of City Hall in the afternoon because the days are so much longer!
Community Wedding Service
We pride ourselves on being a culturally diverse, gay / lesbian / same-sex friendly service. We have been serving the LGBTQ community from the very beginning of legal same-sex marriages. To check our availability or to receive more information please click Availability or call us at 925-323-5397 email us at mike@dubnoffphoto.com. Our wedding packages are inexpensive and easy to understand with no hidden fees or charges. Please be sure when you book a SF city hall wedding photographer that they will provide you with ALL of the images and not just a few handpicked best ones. Thank you for reviewing our website, we hope to hear from you soon!