A Private Oceanfront Reception at the Beach Chalet

A First Dance on the Marble, Then Portraits

Before they left downtown, Alexandra and Jason had their first dance right there in City Hall, out on the round marble medallion inset in the rotunda floor. The family stood in a ring around them with phones up, someone's mint-green dress and someone's father in grey framing the circle. From the balcony above, you can see the two of them turning on the stone while the pattern of the floor wheels out around them.

The family photos happened in the marble corridors, the parents gathered in close, Jason with his mother in her mint-green gown, everyone still holding the ease of a room that had just watched them marry. Then everyone spilled back toward the cars for the drive to the coast.

Dinner Over Ocean Beach at the Beach Chalet

The reception carried them all the way to the western edge of the park, where the Beach Chalet sits across the road from Ocean Beach. Downstairs, the walls hold a cycle of frescoes that Lucien Labaudt painted here in 1936 and 1937, scenes of San Francisco life set right into the plaster, a piece of the city's history built into the building the couple had chosen for dinner.

The private reception was upstairs, the Pacific stretched out past the windows and the fog rolling in the way it does on this side of the city. Twenty-three guests sat down while the light went long over the water, musicians playing through the room as the ocean turned from grey to gold to dark past the glass. There were toasts, and there was a cake from Cake Coquette, cut with the beach behind them. The evening stayed close and warm on the foggy edge of San Francisco.