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

Portraits in a 1915 Landmark

Afterward, the couple and their family stayed in the building for photos. San Francisco City Hall is Arthur Brown Jr.'s 1915 Beaux-Arts landmark, rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake took the original down, and the fourth floor gives a photographer symmetry and arches in every direction, the grand staircase, the repeating archways, the light coming in off the tall windows. The two of them moved through the galleries with their family, the two bouquets back in hand, 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 away on Bush Street, the kind of room that seats a party this size and makes the food the event. The whole menu was plant-based, a peach and heirloom tomato salad to start, seared black cod and an heirloom-tomato pasta for the mains, and a wine list of small French appellations, wine and beer only, poured through the afternoon.

Dessert was a vegan vanilla bean cake with a fresh strawberry compote filling, 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 point of booking it.