Irene & Paul’s Elopement Wedding at the Seattle Courthouse

In early November I received a text message from an unknown phone number.  This is not unusual, as I get spam text messages regularly.  But this was not a typical “mystery text” but was from a man named Paul who was planning on getting married at the Seattle Courthouse in a couple of weeks, and he wanted to know if I was available to photograph the wedding.  I texted back that I was available, and we then proceeded to play “text tag” for the next couple of days, with each of us managing to text whenever the receiving party was not able to quickly answer.  Text messaging is great when you can have a texting conversation, but this was going to be worse than phone tag!  And to make it worse, Paul rarely checks his email while email is my primary method of communication many days, so we chased each other in circles for a couple of days before finally managing to schedule a phone call.  LOL!  Sometimes technology is NOT my friend!

When we finally talked, I was able to find out a lot more about the tentative plans for the wedding, and we talked over some other options.  Paul really wanted to go somewhere for photos before the wedding to get some nice shots with his bride-to-be Irene, preferably someplace with a nice view of the city.  I immediately suggested Kerry Park, which has probably the best (and most photographed) view of Seattle available, and he thought that sounded like a good plan.  I talked him through the procedure at the Courthouse so he’d know what time we needed to arrive there, and we set up a time to meet at Kerry Park for a pre-ceremony photo session.

The day of the wedding was beautiful, and when we met at Kerry Park the view was spectacular, with Mt. Rainier even visible in the distance through the light haze.  Accompanying Paul and Irene were Pauyl’s parents, Irene’s aunt, and two of Irene’s good friends.  Irene’s parents are in the Philippines and were not able to be there for the wedding, but Irene and Paul plan to travel to visit them soon.  We were under a bit of a time crunch since we needed to take the photos and then drive across town to the Courthouse, and had less than an hour before we needed to be at the Courthouse and ready to see the judge.  Fortunately the park was fairly empty and we had no problem getting in a nice session before we had to make the dash to the Courthouse.

When we got to the Courthouse there was a short wait before one of the judges was available to perform the ceremony, so we all waited in the lobby and enjoyed the gorgeous sunset.  While we were waiting, the clerk asked if we’d like to get into one of the “wedding rooms” early to take some photos while waiting for the judge. So we were able to get a few nice shots with the very end of the sunset, which you will see below.

Finally the judge was ready, and we moved to the Jury Selection room for the ceremony.  This is probably the nicest room at the Courthouse for a wedding, and is usually used by larger groups.  But we happened to luck out and got to use this space.

By now it was quite dark, and the view over the lights of South Seattle was fantastic.  Irene and Paul had opted for a very simple ceremony, and in less than 10 minutes they were married!

Now you can check out some photos from the day, I hope that you enjoy them.