Jocelyn & Austin’s Elopement Wedding at the King County Courthouse

On December 10 I received an email from Jennifer.  She and fiancé Austin were planning a courthouse elopement in Seattle on December 18, and they wanted to know if I was available to be their photographer. I did have the date open, so we started a dialog about their plans.  It was not initially clear whether they were getting married at the Seattle Municipal Courthouse or the King County Courthouse, but that was cleared up quickly.

The courthouse at which they were getting married was important not just so that I would know where I needed to be to do the photography.  While they are located only a couple of blocks apart, the two courthouses operate very differently for wedding ceremonies.  At the Seattle courthouse it is a “first come, first served” operation so it is critical to be there early.  But at the King County courthouse you can make a reservation for a specific time, and judges are available there to perform a ceremony later in the evening than at the Seattle courthouse.  Jocelyn and Austin had a 6PM ceremony scheduled.  The later time was important since business hours at the KC courthouse end at 5PM, meaning the building is fairly empty at 6PM.  Which meant that we would have more opportunities for photos inside the building without lots of potential photo-bombers!

We decided to meet in the building lobby at 5:30PM, to allow us a bit of time for some photos before meeting with the judge for the ceremony.  While the weather forecast for the day had been for rain and wind, it was actually quite calm with no rain when I arrived at the courthouse.  Austin and Jocelyn arrived shortly after I did, and we briefly discussed taking a few photos outside since the conditions were so good.  But they decided that they’d rather do photos indoors  at that point since we were fairly short on time, and we’d try to do some outdoor “street shots” after the ceremony.

So we spent about 15 minutes in the elevator lobby taking photos of Jocelyn, Austin and their three friends who had come to witness the wedding.  The lobby is actually pretty nice for photos, with very nice tile floors and some cool murals on the walls, as you’ll see in the photo below.  After we got a decent variety of photos we headed up to the 7th floor to meet with with judge who would perform the marriage.

When we reached the correct courtroom we found that another couple was already there.  They had arrived late, and still needed another 10-15 minutes to finish their wedding ceremony.  So we hung out in the hall and I had a chance to find out a little about Jocelyn and Austin. LOL!  That’s one of the crazy things about courthouse elopements; most times I don’t meet the couple until right before the ceremony, and know very little about them or their backgrounds.  So the short delay was nice since we got to know each other at least a little bit.

Once the other couple had completed their wedding Judge Rosen brought us all into the courtroom. He then took Jocelyn and Austin back to his office so they could fill out all the legal paperwork prior to the ceremony, and I tagged along to get a few photos of the process.  Once the paperwork was completed we all came back to the courtroom and Judge Rosen performed the wedding ceremony.  As with most elopements it was quite short, and about 10 minutes later Austin and Jocelyn were legally married!

We wanted to get some outdoor photos so we hurried down to the lobby, with the plan being to walk up to City Hall for some photos in the courtyard there as well as on the street nearby,  but while we had been inside the courthouse, the predicted rain had made an appearance.  Still not windy, and not raining too hard, but definitely raining.  The newlyweds were still game to take some photos, so we headed up the hill to to City Hall.  Unfortunately between us we only had one rather small umbrella, so I had Jocelyn, Austin and their friends head for City Hall while I ran to my car to grab a couple of good big umbrellas so we could get our photos without getting soaked.

Once I got the umbrellas we spent about 30 minutes playing around in the rain near City Hall.  It was actually quite fun, and we got some good photos.  But see for yourself, just scroll down the page!