A Laguna Beach City Hall Wedding

A Laguna Beach City Hall Wedding

Three hours of coverage. Maybe 15 or so people. No reception (besides dinner), no dance floor, no timeline padding. Besides making sure we got to City Hall before it closed.

It was one of my favorite days of the summer.

Tara and Blake met thirteen years ago in cosmetology school. On July thirty first they got ready at a place in San Clemente, drove down the coast, and got married outside a public building on Forest Avenue with their three boys standing right there.

That is the entire wedding. It was more than enough.

The Necklace

Tara lost her dad in 2020. She wore his wedding ring on a chain around her neck, and while she was getting ready, her mom fastened it for her. I shot it close. Her mom's hands at the back of her neck, the clasp, the ring settling against her collarbone. Neither of them said much. There was nothing to say that the gesture was not already saying.
That necklace became the thing I tracked all day. It is in the getting ready frames, it is in the ceremony frames, it is in the beach portraits with the ocean behind it. Not as a styled detail. As a fact. He was there in the only way he could be, and I was not going to let a single hour go by without finding him in the frame.

She did her own hair, by the way, which after thirteen years in the industry is exactly right. Alexis Concha did her makeup.

Blake spent the morning getting three boys into their clothes and asked me not to photograph him getting ready. I want to say something about that, because I think it is the most telling thing about him. He was not unavailable because he did not care about the photos. He was unavailable because Jagger, Maverick and Sonny needed him, and on the day he became their family in a legal sense he was already doing the job. I did not photograph it. I watched it.

The First Look Happened at City Hall

We drove over and did the first look right there at City Hall.

I gave them a lot of room and shot long. His face first, always. Then her walking up behind him. Then the part where neither of them is performing anything because they forgot I was standing there, which is the entire reason I shoot the way I shoot.

The boys were nearby. Their reactions are in the take too.

How a Laguna Beach City Hall Wedding Actually Works

If you are considering this, here is the practical version, because I could not find a straight answer anywhere when I was preparing.

The ceremony is outdoors. You are married in front of the City Hall building or in the garden by the water district building next door, not in a courtroom, which means the weather and the light are part of your day whether you planned for them or not. City Hall does not issue marriage licenses, so you have to get one from the Orange County Clerk-Recorder before you arrive and physically bring it with you. You need an appointment. And the scheduling has a quirk worth knowing: they take appointments Monday through Thursday, and only every other Friday, with the last Friday slot at four o'clock. Tara and Blake had the four o'clock on a Friday, which was the last appointment of the day.

Now the honest part about light. A mid-afternoon ceremony on the coast in July is bright and direct. There is no getting around it. I worked open shade on the Forest Avenue side of the building for the family groupings and portraits, and when we went down to the sand around five, the sun was still high with sunset almost three hours off, so I backlit them and used the water to bounce fill.

You can get beautiful images in that window. You cannot get golden hour in that window. If golden hour on the beach is what you are picturing, that is a different plan and a different conversation, and I would rather tell you that before you book than after.

Forest Avenue, Then the Sand

Bridgette officiated. The ceremony opened with a prayer, and I treated that with the same weight as the vows, because for these two it carries the same weight. Becoming one under God is how Tara put it to me. It was not a formality tacked onto the front.

Vows, rings, the kiss, and three boys watching their parents get married.

We did family groupings fast while everyone was together, then took the five of them around the building. Walking across Forest Avenue holding hands was Tara's specific request and it is one of the best frames of the day. The boys being boys in between everything.

Then down to the water. The two of them alone first, quiet and close and backlit. Then the boys came running and all five of them were in the sand.

One wide frame at the end where they are very small and the ocean is very large.

Then I Put the Camera Away

Coverage ended at five thirty.

I went to dinner with them at The Rooftop in Laguna Beach. Not working. No camera. Just a guest at the table.

I want to be honest that this is not something I do at every wedding, and it is not something you should expect when you hire me. But Tara and Blake asked, and I said yes, and sitting up there over the water with the two of them and their boys after documenting the whole thing was the best possible ending to that day. We talked for hours. I laughed until my face hurt.

A Laguna Beach City Hall wedding gives you almost none of the things the industry says a wedding is supposed to have. No venue walkthrough, no seating chart, no vendor team, no twelve hour day. What it gives you instead is the actual point, condensed down until there is nothing left in it that does not matter.

Tara and Blake are married. Their boys were standing right there. Her dad was around her neck the whole time.

That was the wedding.

Planning something small? Courthouse, city hall, beach, backyard. Tell me when and where and who is coming. I will take it from there.