- Ceremony
- Victorian Marriage Registry, Old Treasury Building
- City
- Melbourne
- Coverage
- Photography, 35mm film, Videography
- Edit
- Clean, warm colour and crisp black and white
- Team
- Jay
Karina and Chris kept their wedding as close as a wedding can be: a legal-only ceremony at the Victorian Marriage Registry on a Tuesday in July, their mums beside them, and an hour and a half beforehand wandering some of Melbourne's grandest corners with us.
The ceremony itself would take about fifteen minutes, so we planned the portraits for before it, starting at 1pm. Karina and Chris had sent a few inspiration photos and told us they were happy to be guided on the day, which made it easy to start somewhere grand. Karina wore a white midi dress with short sleeves and a deep V neck, white slingback heels and her long blonde hair loose in waves, with no veil and no bouquet. Chris wore a loose brown suit over a white T-shirt, simple against all that stone.
Parliament House steps
We began at Parliament House on Spring Street, on the wide sandstone steps beneath the columns. Karina walked up ahead, then looked back over her shoulder and smiled as the wind lifted her hair. On a roll of black and white 35mm film she reached a hand back towards the camera, and Chris led her up the steps by the hand. The sky was a flat winter grey all afternoon. On pale stone like this it gives soft, even light, with no harsh shadows across faces and no squinting.
Columns and the colonnade
Up among the columns we kept things close: the two of them standing together, then foreheads touching, then their hands joined with the rings already showing. Karina smiled in Chris's arms against a column. Then we moved into the long colonnade, where patterned tiles run underfoot and the columns repeat into the distance under a vaulted ceiling. Chris twirled Karina between the columns, they kissed beneath the vaults, and we stood in the very centre for the symmetrical frame of the columns running away. On film, Chris laughed by a column with Karina's hair blowing across the foreground.
The doors and the window
At the end of the colonnade they walked hand in hand to the carved timber doors and stood side by side in front of them, frames we made on 35mm film. Beside the doors, a tall arched window reflected the city back at us, and Karina rested her head on Chris's shoulder in front of it. We finished at Parliament House with a wide black and white frame on the steps under the columns, and a kiss on the steps on colour film, where the light came out warm.
Down Spring Street
From Parliament we walked back down the city footpath on Spring Street, Karina smiling up at Chris as they went, and crossed the road hand in hand at a zebra crossing in front of a tall cream building. A short walk between places often gives us some of the most natural frames of the day, because nobody is posing; they are just walking together. This part of the city makes it easy, too: the registry, Parliament House and Treasury Gardens all sit within a few minutes of each other.
Under the fig trees
In Treasury Gardens we started under the huge old fig trees. In July most of the trees in the gardens were bare, and the ground under the figs was covered in fallen leaves. Karina stood against the trunk of one of them in warm light, and the two of them smiled at each other under the spreading branches. On film, they kissed among the trees with the leaves around their feet. The figs are only a few minutes' walk from the registry's front steps.
The fountain lawn
The lawn by the pond, with its two fountain jets, kept us busy the longest. They kissed by the water first, then Chris lifted Karina and carried her across the grass, and held her from behind with their hands and rings together. Karina rested a hand on his chest with the fountain playing behind them, they reached for each other across the lawn, and Chris kissed her forehead by the water. Then they sat together on the stone edge of a smaller pond among the garden beds, before one more walk down the long avenue of old trees and a quiet black and white frame under a tree.
The Old Treasury Building
We finished the portraits at the Old Treasury Building itself, with the registry just inside. They held hands on the stone steps by the old lamp standards, kissed beside the arched windows of the facade in black and white, and leaned on a sandstone balustrade with the city street and a palm tree behind them. By then it was about twenty to three, there was a little time to catch their breath, and nowhere left to go but in through the door.
The ceremony by the fireplace
Karina waited by a shuttered window inside before it was their turn. The ceremony was in a small room with a black fireplace, a big gilded mirror above it that caught the chandelier, and tall arrangements of blue delphiniums with peach and white flowers on the mantel. With only their mums there, one in a dark floral dress and one in a navy floral top, Karina and Chris held hands in front of the fireplace, said their vows, kissed, and then held each other in a long hug. It took a few minutes, and it was the quietest part of the day.
Signing, and their mums
Karina signed while Chris watched, and then the two of them sat at a red timber desk with one of their mums, all smiles. They had asked for a few special photographs with their mums, so we made time for them. On the way out, down a long corridor, we found a velvet armchair by a window, and Karina sat in it with Chris standing beside her, a tall vase and timber blinds behind them. Outside, they smiled at each other against the sandstone columns, then stood with both mums in front of the columns for the last frames of the day.
The film and the edit
We covered Karina and Chris's day three ways: digital photographs, rolls of 35mm film in colour and black and white, and video, cut into a short film of the day, which is below. The 35mm frames sit among the digital ones in this story, in the order they were taken. We kept the edit clean, with warm colour and crisp black and white, so the grey winter light, the sandstone and the bare trees look the way they did that afternoon.
A registry wedding, done well
For couples weighing up a registry ceremony, Karina and Chris's day is a good example of how to make it feel like a whole wedding. Plan the portraits around the ceremony rather than squeezing them in, choose two or three places within walking distance, and keep the people who matter most right beside you. A legal-only ceremony is over in minutes, but the afternoon around it can be as full as you like.
