It has taken me a year to write this blog – perhaps I wanted to keep this magic day private, or perhaps it has taken me a while to get the perspective needed to write about the most perfect wedding I could’ve imagined. I’m glad I didn’t live tweet or video stream my wedding to be honest, as it allowed me to remain in the moment! Here is the story of my perfect San Francisco elopement…
Choosing an elopement location
In December 2015, we eloped to San Francisco on our way to New Zealand. We had our New Zealand trip planned 2 years ahead, but decided that our ideal wedding would involve eloping, and this trip gave us that opportunity.
We first thought of getting hitched in Paris, our favourite city – but there are residency rules that apply. Then we thought about Nashville (being country fans and musicians), but again that had some complicated pre-requisites. Then my thoughts turned to cities in the USA that would allow us to transit to New Zealand easily, but also give us great honeymoon opportunities (and anniversary locations too)!
San Francisco fit the bill in so many ways – the city hall is stunning and there is an easy process to book your wedding appointment online (and no pre-requisites); and transiting to NZ via SF meant I could fulfil a teenage dream of driving down the Pacific Coast Highway for our honeymoon.
Planning the finer details
Once our flights via SF were confirmed, we began the planning (this is my forte, so I loved this part)!
- You can only book your wedding appointments 60 days ahead, so I set a diary reminder to log in and book on the day the booking tool opened. You need two appointments too, one to get your paperwork prepped and the other to actually get married – we chose a morning appointment to do the paperwork, and an afternoon appointment for the ceremony; and they recommend a small gap in between appointments to ensure you don’t run into problems if the paperwork appointment is delayed at all. It was important for my organisational brain to delineate between the two appointments and have prep time!
Photographer
The next step was the photographer, who was also going to be our witness – after many hours of scouring profiles on the internet, we contacted Rachel Levine, a photographer who had a lovely broad range of styles in her portfolio. Rachel charged a good set rate for the short period we wanted. We didn’t want a whole day of photos, we just wanted a couple of hours of City Hall pics in a laid back style (given we weren’t doing the traditional white wedding thing).
Rachel turned out to be the perfect match and took some stunning photos (see below), and became a friend as she is so darn cool! Rachel can also provide tips on other things associated with weddings – flowers, hair, make-up etc.
Wedding hotel
We booked a private club hotel near Union Square (Club Donatello), and they gave us a lovely corner suite for our stay. We had sparkly waiting in our room and lovely little touches that made our stay special.
Wedding dinner
For our wedding dinner, we decided we wanted a degustation menu with matching wines. There are many Michelin star restaurants in San Francisco, but we chose a non-starred one due to the amazing reviews.
AQ Restaurant in the Mission District was tucked away from the tourist areas and has a fabulous look and feel. The staff served you with that quiet diligence that you’d expect from a nearly-starred restaurant (e.g. you come back from the bathroom to find your napkin beautifully refolded etc.), plus they wrote us a congratulations card for the table too. It was a meal to remember for sure! [November 2017 edit: AQ has now unfortunately shut down].
Paperwork
One thing to remember about getting your marriage certificate is that it won’t be available immediately after your ceremony. It takes about 10-14 days to be produced. So if you won’t be hanging around San Francisco, you’ll need to contact the City Hall office at a later date and order copies via their online system. Unfortunately in order to do this, you must verify your identity at a US consulate.
A San Francisco Elopement
Eloping isn’t for everyone, but the advantages were obvious to us: We’d both been married before, so didn’t want the hassle of a big wedding again, plus we didn’t want the cost of a big wedding either! For less than the cost of a usual wedding, we were able to spend 5 weeks away in California and New Zealand, with the bonus of getting to be entirely selfish on our wedding day. It wasn’t a conventional wedding, but we aren’t conventional people – so it was absolutely perfect for us.
Read about our time in San Francisco.
All photos & content © Hannah Henderson and Rachel Levine, and may not be used without permission (sharing this blog post is fine, though!).
