Tamara & Joseph Elope at the Seattle Courthouse

I was contacted by Tamara back in the beginning of February.  She and her fiance Joseph were planning to do an elopement wedding in the Seattle area, and she wanted to know if I’d be interested in working with them on their wedding photos.  They were considering going to some really cool spots for an elopement, such as Mt Rainier or Ruby Beach.  But both of those locations are 2-3 hours from Seattle, and in early March (when they wanted to have their wedding) Mt Rainier would be covered under a LOT of snow.

We corresponded several times by email and finally set up a phone call.  The upshot was that they decided that they were still going to be married in Seattle, but rather than having to drag an officiant out to the coast (or to some other location) they would have an elopement ceremony at the Seattle Courthouse, and do a separate trip afterwards to someplace in the area that would be cool to visit.

More emails followed, and I explained to them how the wedding procedure works at the Seattle Courthouse so they’d have a shot at being at the front of the line on their chosen wedding day.  We met for the first time outside the clerk’s office at the courthouse about 30 minutes before a judge would be free to perform their ceremony.

Photos at the Courthouse

Since we had a little time to kill I suggested that we visit the rooftop of the courthouse building, which has a wonderful balcony and a great view for photos.  While we took photos we had a chance to get to know each other a bit.  I was fascinated to learn that Tamara is from Toronto, and Joseph from near Miami.  Better yet, they met while both were in Medelin, Colombia.  Tamara was teaching English, and Joseph was there on business; and they met through Tinder!  LOL!  Talk about a low probability meeting!

After getting some photos on the balcony (some of which you’ll see below) we moved back down to the hallway outside the clerk’s office and took some more pictures.

The Wedding Ceremony

Finally Tamara and Joseph were called to meet with the judge who would perform their ceremony.  Even though it was a Monday, there were a surprising number of couples waiting to get married at the Courthouse that day, so many of the usual “wedding rooms” were in use.  We lucked out and got to use the Jury Selection Room for the ceremony; this is the largest of the available spaces at the Courthouse and is usually saved for larger groups.  Fantastic views out of the huger floor to ceiling windows, as you’ll see in the photos.

The ceremony was simple but very nice, and a short time later Tamara and Joseph were officially married!

Now you can finally take some time and look at the photos below. Unless you cheated and skipped ahead already!