Planning San Francisco City Hall wedding is incredibly easy but you still need to follow a number of easy steps.
As of 2020, the public or confidential marriage license fee is $110, Civil Ceremony fee is $90 and Souvenir Marriage Certificate cost is $7.
A Civil Ceremony at San Francisco City Hall cannot be scheduled beyond 90 days window. For example, if you are trying to reserve an October date in April, the system won’t allow that. However, if you planning to rent a space for your Ceremony via the event department, you will be able to book City Hall without 90 days limitation.
COVID-19 Update: San Francisco City Hall currently does not allow weddings. We will update this page as soon as this policy changes.
According to our research and experience, the best time to get married at San Francisco City Hall would be early morning before 10AM or late afternoon after 3PM.
The current limit is 6 guests for any San Francisco City Hall wedding. However, if you are renting a space via event department, you can have up to 1
Between 20-30 minutes. The actual Civil Ceremony in the Rotunda last about 5 minutes. Registration prices can be as quick as 5 minutes and as long as 45 minutes depending on the County Clerk’s office schedule.
Yes, your friend can get a “minister for the day” license from the County Clerk and officiate your wedding instead of a City Hall provided officiant. However, you may not be able to get married in the Rotunda. Since City Hall has many beautiful private areas, it usually not an issue.
While it is possible to obtain a marriage and get married at City Hall without an appointment, it is unlikely that County Clerk office will agree to that although we’ve witnessed just that more than once. We highly recommend making an advance reservation.
Yes, you can choose either to exchange rings or omit this part from your Ceremony. The deputy marriage commissioner will ask you if you are going to exchange rings.
No. This is not permitted during the Civil Ceremony. Some officiants are okay with that but the general answer is now since there are other couples waiting in line to get married.
Yes, your photographer will be able to photograph you at any available public location inside the City Hall.
Yes, City Hall offers number of options for Saturday events but they start at $5000.
No. Any person over 18 years old who understands English (Ceremonies can be arranged in Spanish as well) and has a valid passport can obtain a marriage certificate and get married at San Francisco City Hall.
There is no concrete rule. We see clients dress “casual smart” or have a full wedding attire including tuxedo and full length gown. More often though its a shorter white dress and a suit.
Yes, you can obtain a copy of your marriage certificate online, 2-3 weeks after the wedding and can order it to be mailed anywhere including international destinations. US military personnel can expedite this process.
Practically any SF based studio offer City Hall packages. You should only focus your attention on the quality of presented images, and a customer feedback. Remember that wedding photography is a lifetime investment.
INCLUDED WITH SELECTED PACKAGES
Being so close to our clients on the wedding day allow us to capture many intimate moments on film. The end result can be put together in a form of a cinematic story.
Our team has experience in taking and producing full wedding videos. But since intimate weddings do not require a large scale production team, these short stories are relatively easy to capture.
We are a team of professional San Francisco based wedding photographers who specialize in complex weekend celebrations but have additional weekday availability. We love the intimacy of small San Francisco City Hall weddings and consider it as one of the most unique and special places to get married at. Established in 2011, SFCHWP has covered over 500 weddings at San Francisco City Hall. We treat each celebration in a unique way trying to avoid cookie cutter approach. Our goal is to create an artistic reportage of your wedding day.