Sebastian and Queen get married at the Seattle Courthouse – or do they?

As we all know very well, things have gotten a little crazy for the last six months or so.  And many things that we have always taken for granted have changed in ways we would no have expected.  This wedding is an example of that.

I was first contacted by Sebastian less than a week before he and  his fiancé Queen were to be married at the Seattle Municipal Courthouse.  Initially it was a bit confused, because he did not know if they were getting married at the Seattle Courthouse or the King County Courthouse.  the two buildings are only a couple of blocks apart and I have found that couples often get them confused.  We got that cleared up, but I was a bit puzzled.  The Seattle Courthouse had closed to weddings way back in mid-March, and I had not heard anything about it reopening.  But Sebastian was certain that the wedding was to take place on the planned date, and he had already received confirmation from the courthouse.

I must admit that I was very excited about this!  In a typical spring/summer I usually shoot 10-20 weddings at the two courthouses, but with the virus shutdowns the last courthouse elopement I had photographed was back at the end of February.  I described to Sebastian the typical procedure for a wedding at the Seattle Courthouse, and emphasized that it would probably be important to be there early, since my expectation was that there would be a lot of pent-up demand for courthouse elopements and they did not want to have to wait in a long line to see a judge.

The day of the wedding I arrived at the courthouse quite early.  There were what appeared to be two couples waiting outside the street entrance to the courthouse, but neither one was Queen and Sebastian.  I went into the building, expecting to go through the metal detectors and then take the elevator to the 10th floor, where the weddings take place.

But as I reached the metal detectors the guard stopped me and asked where I was going.  I told him I was there to photograph a wedding.  He then said that I should wait outside, and that someone would be checking couples in soon.  I figured that with the virus they wanted to minimize exposure and were only going to let couples into the building once a judge was free, so the ceremonies could take place as quickly as possible.

A few minutes later Queen and Sebastian arrived.  After explaining what appeared to be happening I suggested that we take some photos in front of the courthouse while we were waiting.  So we played around for 10-15 minutes, and finally Willie Gregory, a judge who I have worked with numerous times in the past,  came out the front door, and called out the names of another couple.  He then went over and began talking with them.  I thought that he would then take the couple back into the building and up to the 10th floor, to one of the rooms where ceremonies typically happen.

But after less than a minute Judge Gregory left the first couple and approached us.  The other couple was still waiting on someone to arrive, so we were next on the list.  Here is where things got really strange.  Judge Gregory explained that due to COVID the courthouse was still mostly closed, and that they had not even had a jury trial there since mid-March.  So the “courthouse wedding” would not take place in the courthouse at all!  Instead we all walked a block to Seattle City Hall, where there are a couple of nice courtyard areas.  Judge Gregory told us to take our pick of where the wedding would happen, and after talking it over with Sebastian and Queen we chose our spot, where we had a nice background of some trees rather than looking at the streets.

From there everything went great.  Both Queen and Sebastian wore masks for the ceremony, as did the judge.  Afterwards we took a few photos with the judge and then after he left the three of us took some photos in various spots around City Hall.  The weather was trying hard to start raining, so once we had plenty of good shots we called it a day.