A Fine-Dining Micro Wedding at Wayfare Tavern in San Francisco

Across San Francisco to the Financial District

The move across San Francisco to the Financial District is the sort of thing that sounds like a logistics problem and turns into the part everyone remembers — the whole group together, the city going by outside. It set them down at Wayfare Tavern, near Pine and Battery.

The dining room is built to honor the city's turn-of-the-century Barbary Coast history: exposed brick, a full backlit bar, warm domed pendant lamps, a tartan floor, dark wood everywhere. The signature Wayfare cocktails came out first — deep-red drinks over ice with an orange slice and a little branded pick — a room with real character to settle into.

Dinner at Wayfare Tavern

The reception was the meal. Wayfare Tavern is known for refined American cooking — its fried chicken is close to legendary — and Emily and Ramon had built the whole day around a real dinner in a restaurant with soul. Thirty-three people sat at the table together, a flower girl in sage green among them, plated courses going out under the warm lamps.

Sweet C's Cakeshoppe made the cake, a single tier of white frosting flecked with dark cookie pieces on a small stand. Emily and Ramon cut it at the edge of the bar, Ramon in shirtsleeves and black suspenders now, both of them laughing over the first bite. The afternoon had the ease of a great long lunch with the people you most wanted in the room — a harder thing to pull off than it sounds, and exactly what a fine-dining micro wedding is for.