A Multicultural City Hall Elopement Under the Golden Dome

Portraits Through the Multicultural City Hall Landmark

Family and couple portraits followed through the building. The whole group gathered under the rotunda for one — both families shoulder to shoulder beneath the great golden dome, the light pouring down the arched window behind them, Shireen's mother in green lace at the center with her cane and her wrist corsage. On a bench off the North Gallery, Shireen sat between her parents for a quiet minute, her father bent to kiss the back of her hand, her mother settled close on her other side. City Hall is a 1915 Beaux-Arts landmark, and the North Gallery where they married carries tall leaded-glass windows on three sides — the most natural light in the building — and Shireen and Kendall found a stretch of it for themselves, a kiss in the empty gallery, their shadows long across the polished marble.

A small family circle gets to use the building differently than a larger event would allow. With only a handful of people, the couple could pause at any landing without managing a crowd, and the civic corridors, built for grandeur, end up feeling almost private at that scale. Kendall stood between his mother and father for one grouping, all three of them laughing, before the group moved on through the arches.

Dinner Back at the House

Everyone drove back to the Lyon Street house for the reception. Shireen and Kendall changed and stopped for a few more photos around the place, the front door especially, which they had wanted from the start.

The family had picked up dinner from a restaurant, and before anyone ate, Shireen's father gave a blessing over the meal. Later they cut a small heart-shaped cake from Art Cakes Bakery, its buttercream piped in pale green and set with white sugar roses, the two of them reaching for it together. It was an ending that fit a wedding built around family — the ceremony downtown under the dome, the celebration at home, the same faces all the way through.