A Same-Sex City Hall Wedding, Then a Plant-Based Table

Portraits Through the 1915 Landmark

Afterward the couple and their family stayed in the building for photos, and City Hall gives a photographer more than most venues manage in an acre of grounds. Arthur Brown Jr. finished this Beaux-Arts landmark in 1915, and it repeats its arches and its light in every direction — carved stone urns with lion faces flanking the galleries, sculptural reliefs set into the walls, the grand staircase and the dome. The brides moved through the galleries with their people, the tuxedo and the gold sneakers on one, the lace train sweeping the marble on the other, before the car took the group across town for dinner.

A Vegan-Friendly SF Reception on Bush Street

Dinner was at a small French wine bar tucked onto Bush Street, a room that seats a party this size and makes the meal the whole event. The menu was entirely plant-based — a peach and heirloom tomato salad to start, then seared black cod and an heirloom-tomato pasta, with a list of small French appellations poured through the afternoon, wine and beer only.

Dessert was a vegan vanilla bean cake with fresh strawberry compote, set out alongside macarons, tartlets, and chocolate-dipped strawberries. Eighteen people around one table in a wine bar the size of the party, staying as long as the food and the wine held out — which was the reason they'd booked a place this small in the first place.