Orange County Courthouse Weddings: Forget the Rules. Make It Yours.
Scene 01 · Ext. Orange County · Day
Orange County Courthouse WeddingsForget the rules.
Make it yours.
Here's the thing I love about courthouse weddings. Once you strip away everything a wedding is supposedly required to have, you're left with the two people who are actually getting married. And suddenly you can do pretty much anything you want.
Jessica & Alex, Laguna Hills. A courthouse wedding, and very much a wedding.
Int. Government building · Day · the unromantic version
You drive to a government building.
You fill out some paperwork.
Someone says a few official things.
Congratulations. You're married.
Everyone gets back in their cars.
Cool.
But that doesn't have to be your courthouse wedding.
To me, photographing a courthouse wedding is basically a really great couples session with a little paperwork and a short ceremony thrown into the middle. And honestly? That sounds pretty fantastic.
The official part. Also one of my favorite frames of the whole day.
Scene 02 · Not settling
A courthouse wedding isn't settling.
"We're just doing the courthouse." Nope. You are getting married. Whether there are eight people watching or 180 doesn't change that.
More and more of the couples I meet aren't choosing a smaller wedding because they can't have the giant one. They just don't want it. They have careers. Dogs. Favorite restaurants. Trips they'd rather take. Maybe they can think of twelve people they genuinely want around them and cannot come up with another 138 no matter how aggressively they scroll through their contacts.
That's not settling. That's knowing yourselves.
Eight people watching or 180. Still married.
Scene 03 · You're married. Now what?
Whatever you want.
You do the official part. You're married. Now the day is yours. Pick a scene.
There is no Wedding Police hiding behind a shrub waiting to arrest you because you failed to cut a three-tier cake. Make a day out of the things you actually like doing together. Because that's the part I'm interested in photographing.
Cotton candy in San Diego. Putters in Sherman Oaks. Nobody arrested.
Scene 04 · The story
I don't just want to photograph your wedding. I want to tell your story.
I'm a storytelling photographer. Which sounds very serious until I'm lying on the pavement photographing you eating french fries in wedding clothes.
I don't want a collection of technically beautiful photographs that could belong to any couple. I want your gallery to feel unmistakably like the two of you. How you look at each other. Who reaches for whom. Who can't stop talking when they're nervous. What makes you laugh. The quiet moments. The ridiculous moments. The stuff that happens between the photographs you thought we were taking.
Courthouse weddings give us an incredible amount of freedom to tell it. Nobody's squeezing portraits into 13 minutes between cocktail hour and the grand entrance. No DJ announcing that it is now officially time to have a meaningful moment. We can just go make something together.
Who reaches for whom. What makes you laugh.
Scene 05 · The ceremony is one scene
Think of your wedding like a tiny movie.
Your courthouse ceremony isn't necessarily the entire story. It's one scene.
I
Your kitchen
You make coffee. Your partner can't find their shoes. Someone opens champagne three hours early.
II
The courthouse
Paperwork, nervous energy, rings, the kiss. Your mom trying very hard not to cry while absolutely crying.
III
Downtown
Walking around with absolutely nowhere you're supposed to be. Cheeseburgers.
IV
The coast
Sunset. Barefoot. Whatever comes next.
The courthouse gave us the plot. The rest of the day tells us who the characters are. That's the good stuff.
Somewhere between II and III. The getaway car.
Intermission
Most wedding rules are just rules somebody made up.
Get the diamond. Or don't.
Diamond engagement rings existed long before modern advertising, but De Beers helped turn them into the American default in the 20th century. Even some traditions that feel ancient occasionally have a marketing department lurking somewhere in the family tree.
If you think diamonds are insanely beautiful, get the diamond. Get a giant sparkly one. If you're more of an emerald girl, get the emerald. The point is: make the choice yourself. The same thing goes for the wedding.
Want the big fat Greek wedding? Have the big fat Greek wedding.
Small weddings aren't morally superior to big ones. If your dream involves 200 people, a live band, enough food to feed a minor European principality and a dance floor that doesn't shut down until somebody's uncle loses a shoe, please have that wedding. That sounds amazing.
This isn't about which kind of wedding is correct. It's about a question that somehow gets lost during wedding planning: what would actually make the two of us happy? Maybe it's 200. Maybe it's six. Maybe it's you, your partner and me wandering around Orange County after you get married.
Scene 06 · Small can be incredibly romantic
Nobody's competing for pieces of you.
You're not bouncing from table to table having 90-second conversations. You can actually be together. Every person standing there is one of the handful who matters most in your life. Or nobody else is there. It's just you.
There's something beautifully rebellious about that. Not motorcycle-through-a-burning-hoop rebellious, although if that's your plan we should probably discuss insurance. Rebellious in the simplest possible way: this is our life, and we're going to start it our way.
Anais & Quinn. An engagement session, and exactly what after the courthouse can look like.
Orange County is pretty great for this.
In a single afternoon we can do the courthouse part and be at the beach for sunset. Or lean urban and architectural. Or find the funky neighborhood, restaurant, bar or coffee shop that's actually meaningful to you. A courthouse wedding doesn't mean your entire gallery has to look like it happened outside a courthouse. That's just where you got married. Southern California is a pretty fantastic playground for everything after.
Then the coast.
Scene 07 · A couple of hours, roughly
What your courthouse wedding could actually look like.
Before
We meet before your ceremony and make a few photographs while you're both still in the "holy crap, we're about to get married" part of the afternoon.
The courthouse
Paperwork. Waiting. Little moments. Ceremony. Rings. Kiss. The people you love tackling you with hugs afterward. A few family photographs.
After
Everybody else heads off to celebrate while the three of us disappear for an adventure. The beach. Downtown. In-N-Out. Maybe you destroy each other at miniature golf.
Twenty years from now, I want you to open your photographs and remember more than what your clothes looked like. I want you to remember the day.
A few family photographs. Then the adventure.
Director's notes
The questions people actually ask.
01 · What should you wear to a courthouse wedding?
Whatever makes you feel incredible. Traditional dress, suit, something vintage, color, a short dress and ridiculous sunglasses. You don't have to visually apologize for a courthouse wedding by dressing it down. Wildly overdressed under fluorescent lighting is inherently funny and wonderful.
02 · How much courthouse wedding photography do you need?
You can photograph a courthouse wedding in 30 minutes. With around two hours we can tell an actual story: the courthouse, the people you brought, portraits, some wandering around and a second location afterward. There isn't a predetermined timeline. We're creating it.
03 · Can family and friends be part of it?
Absolutely. Bring the people you genuinely want there. Parents, siblings, your best friend, your kids, the friend who introduced you. You don't have to invite someone because they invited you in 2017 and now you're trapped in an international wedding reciprocity treaty. Keep it close. Or keep it just the two of you.
04 · Courthouse wedding or elopement?
Courthouse wedding, civil ceremony, elopement, small wedding, micro wedding, "we signed some papers and went to the beach and ate cheeseburgers." Call it whatever you want. I care less about the label than what you're creating. I want to know what the two of you are imagining.
05 · Why are you so into this?
Because there's room to actually be together. A giant wedding can be incredible, but it comes with a schedule, a hundred people who each want five minutes of you and a lot of moving parts. With a courthouse wedding or a small elopement we have room to notice things. We can wander. Change plans. Follow good light. Stop for burgers. Let something unexpected happen. For the kind of storytelling I love, that's a pretty great playground.
Wildly overdressed for a government parking lot and a walk-up counter. Correct.
End credits
Into the Great Wide Open.
There's a Tom Petty title I keep coming back to when I think about marriage. You're standing at the beginning of a life you're creating together, and nobody knows exactly what it's going to look like yet. That's kind of the point. There's something pretty wonderful about beginning it with one of the first big decisions you make together: we're going to do this our way.
- Get the diamond.
- Get the emerald.
- Have 200 people.
- Have eight.
- Wear the giant dress.
- Wear the suit you already own.
- Get married at the courthouse.
- Play miniature golf after.
There isn't a correct version. There's your version. If you're looking for an Orange County courthouse wedding photographer who wants to turn your day into a love story that actually looks and feels like the two of you, tell me what you're thinking. Especially if it's weird.
Daniel Wesley
Wear the giant dress. Wear the suit.
