How Things Change: A Family-Filled Boston City Hall Elopement with Caitlin & Evan
“We are both so happy with how easy, effortless, and even fun it felt to have John photograph our elopement. We are so enchanted by the photos he captured! We are having the best time sharing them with our friends and family, and are already picking out ones to have printed and framed.”
Photography asks a lot of you. There is the technical side, learning light and composition. Then there is the human side, knowing how to read a room, asking the right questions, and making people feel seen. I've always found myself adept at both. There are many sides to the coin that is me, and with Caitlin and Evan, I was reminded of that duality.
I met them at Boston City Hall for their civil wedding, joined by both sets of parents and Evan's sister. Before we ever made a photograph, we talked. Caitlin is a professor of Cold War history at Boston College, Evan is a PhD candidate at Yale studying climate change and its social implications, and I found myself reminiscing about my own master's in Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Action. It was nice to meet first in an academic space before slipping into a more artistic one.
As such, City Hall, a place I worked during college, has become the backdrop to a very different path. As a Boston couples photographer, I've photographed enough Boston City Hall elopements that I've grown genuinely fond of its unapologetic brutalism. Yes, really. Every visit, the light finds a new path through the concrete, the shadows shift, and the building offers something I hadn't noticed before. That's the fun of it.
While their families escaped inside from the summer heat, the three of us stayed behind to explore. I was immediately drawn to the late morning light streaking between the building's harsh concrete slabs. I've become quite familiar with this old building, yet it always finds a way to surprise me. I wanted to juxtapose their softness against the severity of the architecture, the vastness of the space with the small moments they quietly shared between them.
We explored inside for a few more portraits before reuniting with their families and heading down to the ceremony room. The air always shifts in that space. It grows quieter, more expectant, and I'm always grateful to witness it.
~ I dos ~
As newlyweds, we returned to the light we'd found earlier for family portraits. The only difference was two more rings and five more people. It was impossible not to notice how excited everyone was, how familial love seemed to sing out in the imagery. Weddings are never just about two people. They're about everyone who helped them arrive there.
From City Hall, the three of us hopped on the Green Line to finish their Boston elopement photography session in the Boston Public Garden. I love these little periods of transition because they write the subtext of the day. The train ride, the walk, the conversation before lunch. Those moments often become just as meaningful as the milestones themselves.
What stayed with me most was the family of it all. It's easy to think a smaller wedding tells a smaller story, but I've found the opposite to be true. More bodies means more love, and more love means more story.
How lucky am I to be the one who gets to read it.
