A Seven-Guest Backyard Wedding in Oakland

Portraits in the Park

Before the ceremony, Haley and Todd had slipped away for portraits at Redwood Regional Park, a few minutes from the yard. The park's redwoods are second- and third-growth, the original old-growth was logged during the Gold Rush, and the forest came back from the stumps into the 150-foot stand that's there today. The oldest trees in the park are around 100 years old, and on a December morning the canopy was heavy and dark, the trails quiet.

After the vows, family photos happened right in the yard, the whole group close enough to fit in a single frame. Seven people is a number where nobody gets cut off at the edge.

First Dance in the Oakland Backyard

The afternoon wound down the way the whole day had run, small and unhurried. There was a toast, the cake from Sweet C's Cakeshoppe was cut, and Haley and Todd had their first dance in the yard.

Seven people, a projected screen for the family watching from home, and a yard that held all of it. The live stream meant the people who couldn't travel were still in the room for every moment, the vows, the toast, the first dance, and the evening moved quietly through all of it until the last ones finally headed home.

December in Oakland has a particular quality in a backyard: the cold that makes people pull close, the dark beyond the heater line, the yard lit and contained while the neighborhood goes quiet around it. Hardy Wilson photographed the full arc of the 7-guest backyard wedding, the cake cut, the candids, the first dance, the table of seven small enough that every conversation carried across it. The intimate Oakland ceremony didn't need scale to leave an impression.