Contrary to what some people may think, courthouse weddings aren’t particularly tricky or stressful. Once you fill out your paperwork and set your date, there won’t be lines or anything else to queue for before meeting the judge at the designated time.
So, I met with Cathy & Brian 30 minutes before the ceremony to greet them and take some portraits before they met with the judge. Unlike the Seattle Municipal Court, the King County Courthouse doesn’t have big windows or access to a rooftop where we could use natural light, so we have to find the ideal spots to make use of the artificial light at this courthouse, which in my opinion has its own appealing character if we know how to use it in our pictures.
After making it to the courtroom, one of the workers explained the ceremony process to the couple and allowed those who had been vaccinated for covid to remove our masks. I used this time to take some detailed shots of the rings.
The big moment came and Cathy could not contain the tears. It was such an emotional time that I had to make sure to capture everyone’s reaction, the couple and the family.
Just like that, in about 5 minutes they were finally married! Now we had to find nice places around to take some family shots and couple portraits right after.
There is a place relatively new to the area called The UPS Waterfall Garden Park, it’s a small half-indoors place that will always look beautiful for pictures regardless of the weather.
After that, we walked a block down the street towards Occidental Square for the couple's portraits. There is a big brick wall with dried leaves that makes for some amazing wide-angle portraits.
The whole square is just surrounded by a lot of brick walls, leaves and just tons of character so we spent a fair amount of time getting nice shots in the area.
Lastly, we walked towards Post Avenue for more portraits. The street reminds me a lot of Boston where Brian is from, so we had a great time reminiscing about the north-east coast, the weather and the architecture (I lived for over a decade in New York so I consider it my second home).
