Donna and Mark married at the Unitarian Church on St Stephen’s Green on a lovely Saturday in December. We took their portraits in the park across the road, and walked around the corner to Dawson Street for dinner at The Ivy. Church, park and restaurant sit inside about four hundred metres of each other. There was snow on the grass, ice on the lake, and a Christmas tree in every room they walked into.

Bride and groom coming down the steps of the Unitarian Church in Dublin through a storm of multi-coloured confetti, her bouquet raised above her head
Ten seconds after they were married

The Morning

It started in Brown Sugar, the award-winning Dublin salon. The place was strung with fairy lights, who knows if they were for the wedding or simply there for Christmas. Regardless of the reason I really like what they add to the photos.

Bride having her foundation applied by a makeup artist in Brown Sugar, Dublin. Salon setting with white fairy lights, a glass of champagne on the counter

Bride settling a silver star crown onto her hair in the salon mirror before her Unitarian Church wedding in Dublin
The crown, going on for the first time

The silver star crown turns up in almost every photograph from here on, I love its almost subtle nature. Really adds a princess element without being over the top (if you’re an over the top bride/groom reading this absolutely no shade we love OTT too!). It catches light really nicely and it never needed fixing.

Bride walking through Dublin city centre in a leopard print dress and coat, holding her flower girl’s hand past the Teeling Distillery signage
Walking to the hotel, veil over one arm

Then she walked. Through the city, veil folded over one arm, holding the flower girl’s hand, past a distillery and a delivery van and everybody else’s ordinary Saturday. This is the frame that tells you what kind of wedding it was going to be.

Bride lifting her wedding dress out of its garment bag in the Westbury, Dublin hotel room on the morning of her Unitarian Church wedding

Bride and her mother laughing together in the Westbury hotel ensuite, the mother in a blue sequinned gown

Bridesmaid and the bride’s mother fastening the buttons on the back of the wedding dress in the Westbury, Dublin
Three pairs of hands, one row of buttons

A note on the Westbury bathrooms, since half of every wedding morning happens in one. They are usually the brightest, most evenly lit space in a hotel room, all those mirrors help the lighting situation whereas the actual suite sometimes ends up fighting it with dark paint and patterns.

The Lobby, Which Did More Work Than Expected

Bride and her father standing in front of an enormous decorated Christmas tree in the Westbury’s lobby before the Unitarian Church wedding
The lobby tree, which was taller than both of them

If you are getting married in Dublin in December, look at your hotel’s lobby before you plan a single indoor portrait. Between the tree, the brass, the staircase and the lighting, most city hotels put up a set in early December that a stylist could not build for money.

Bride laughing while hanging from the brass rail of a hotel luggage trolley, holding her red rose and pine bouquet
Not on the shot list

That one is a brass luggage trolley. It was parked in a corridor, she grabbed it, and it produced two of my favourite frames of the morning. Wedding photographs go wrong when everyone is being careful. Nothing about this was careful.

Bride and her father stepping out through the revolving door of the Westbury, Dublin on the way to the Unitarian Church

Bride and her father sitting together in the back of a 1930s vintage wedding car in Dublin, her red rose bouquet across her lap

Chauffeur in a flat cap helping the bride out of a vintage wedding car outside the Unitarian Church in Dublin
Arriving on St Stephen's Green

The vintage car is the one piece of traditional wedding transport in the whole day, and it earned its keep in about six photographs before being sent home. That is the honest way to use a wedding car in a city: hire it for the arrival, get the pictures, and then walk everywhere else.

Inside the Unitarian Church

The Unitarian Church sits on the west side of St Stephen’s Green with the Luas running past the door. It is a small Gothic revival church from the 1860s, and it is one of the busiest wedding churches in Dublin for a straightforward reason: it will marry couples from any background or none, and the ceremonies feel personal rather than issued.

Groom and best man in velvet dinner jackets waiting at the front of the Unitarian Church in Dublin beside a blue-lit Christmas tree
Waiting, in front of the tree

Look behind them. Carved white stone with the Beatitudes cut into it in red and black, a poinsettia on the floor, and a Christmas tree lit in cold blue. I have photographed a lot of churches. Very few hand you a background like that for free.

Bride laughing as she walks up the red-carpeted aisle of the Unitarian Church in Dublin on her father’s arm, holding a cascading red rose bouquet
Not a solemn entrance

The aisle is short and it is carpeted in red, the pews were dressed with garlands and deep red velvet bows, and there were potted bay trees hung with baubles at the top of it. Everything about the room was already Christmas before the florist arrived.

Bride and groom holding hands during their vows at the Unitarian Church in Dublin, the minister between them in a red stole, the carved Beatitudes wall behind
The vows, and the whole reredos

Flower girl in a red flower crown dabbing her eye with a tissue while the rings are exchanged at a Unitarian Church wedding in Dublin
She held it together better than most of the adults

That second frame is the one I would show anybody asking what documentary coverage actually means. The rings are being exchanged out of focus behind her. The photograph is about the four year old in the foreground with a tissue and a very serious expression, and it exists only because I was not standing where the rings were.

Bride and groom’s first kiss at the Unitarian Church in Dublin, framed by the carved Beatitudes reredos and the full stained glass window above
Everything the room has, in one frame

Then the wide one. Stained glass across the top, the Beatitudes across the middle, velvet bows on the pew ends and two people kissing in the centre of it. If you are choosing a Dublin city church on the strength of one photograph, this is that photograph.

The Steps

The steps at the Unitarian Church are the second reason to book it. They are deep, they face west, and the Gothic arch above them frames a group without you having to arrange anything.

Overhead view of the bride’s satin shoes, the flower girl’s shoes and the groom’s black shoes among scattered red rose petals on the Unitarian Church steps in Dublin
Red petals, granite, three pairs of shoes

Bride and groom in a storm of multi-coloured paper confetti on the steps of the Unitarian Church in Dublin, guests laughing behind them

Wedding guests and family throwing their hands in the air on the steps of the Unitarian Church in Dublin beneath the church noticeboard
Group photographs do not have to be endured

Bride laughing with her two bridesmaids in red and purple gowns under the Gothic arch of the Unitarian Church in Dublin

Bride and groom leaning in to kiss their flower girl on both cheeks outside the Unitarian Church in Dublin

We did every group photograph here, on the steps, immediately after the ceremony, while everyone was still in one place and still wearing coats. The entire set took under fifteen minutes. Group photographs can go awry when they happen an hour later at a hotel, after people have found the bar and scattered.

Black and white photograph of the bride and groom kissing under the carved Gothic arch of the Unitarian Church doorway in Dublin
The arch does the work

Black and white photograph of the bride and groom crossing the Luas tram tracks outside the Unitarian Church in Dublin, the vintage car and an EXCEPT TRAMS sign behind them
Off to the park, across the tram tracks

And then they crossed the road. Tram tracks, a road sign reading EXCEPT TRAMS, the vintage car at the kerb and the church behind. That frame could not have been taken at any venue outside a city, and it is worth more to me than another photograph of a couple on a lawn.

Portraits in St Stephen’s Green

The park gate is directly across from the church. That is the entire logistics section for portraits at this wedding.

Bride and groom standing on the path in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin beside the red brick gate lodge, snow on the grass and the church spire behind them
Snow on the grass, and their own church behind them

The red brick gate lodge just inside the corner of the Green is the best portrait spot in the park and most people walk straight past it. On this day it came with snow on the lawn and the spire of the church they had been married in twenty minutes earlier standing over the trees.

Bride and groom laughing on the stone bridge in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, with the frozen lake and gulls standing on the ice behind them

Bride in a white fur stole holding a red rose bouquet beside the groom among bare winter trees in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin
The fur stole earned its money

Two December notes, both practical. First: a stole or a fur wrap is not a styling accessory in an Irish winter, it is the thing that lets you stay outside long enough to get the photographs. Second: the lake was frozen and the gulls were standing on it. Bare trees, low sun and ice give you a set of portraits that look like nothing you can produce in summer.

Bride and groom kissing in low golden winter light in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, her hand resting on his lapel beside a red rose buttonhole

Black and white photograph of the bride and groom walking hand in hand down a leaf-strewn avenue of bare trees in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin
Thirty minutes, no car

Thirty minutes in the park, start to finish, and back out the gate. Couples who drive to a portrait location typically lose an hour of their own wedding day to it, and the photographs are rarely better for the trip.

Dinner at The Ivy

Around the corner onto Dawson Street, into the private dining room at The Ivy, which is a genuinely unusual room to photograph a wedding dinner in.

Wedding guests standing and applauding as the bride and groom enter the private dining room at The Ivy on Dawson Street, Dublin
Half of them filming, which is fine

Botanical stained glass panels on every wall, mirrors between them, palm print upholstery on the chairs and candles down the middle of the table. It is warm, it is dense, and it is completely unlike a hotel function room. It is also small, which is the point. Every person in the room can see every other person in it.

Bride and groom laughing at the top table at The Ivy on Dawson Street, Dublin, beside a lit pillar candle and a garland of red roses and pine

Guests standing to toast the bride across the long table at The Ivy on Dawson Street, Dublin, wearing paper crowns from Christmas crackers
Christmas crackers at a wedding dinner, and why not

There were Christmas crackers on the table. Everybody pulled them, everybody wore the paper crowns through the toasts, and nobody’s photographs were ruined by it. If you are marrying in December, lean into it rather than trying to keep Christmas out of your wedding. It is going to be in the background of every frame anyway.

Bride, groom and flower girl cutting a white iced wedding cake decorated with frosted red berries at The Ivy on Dawson Street, Dublin
Three sets of hands on the knife

Bride and groom’s first dance in the private dining room at The Ivy on Dawson Street, Dublin, surrounded by botanical stained glass panels

Out Into the City

This is the part of a city wedding you cannot get anywhere else, and the reason I will always push couples towards one.

Bride and groom kissing on the street at night in Dublin as a Luas tram blurs past behind them under Christmas lights
One tram, one exposure, no second chance

A Luas came past, they kissed, and the tram turned into a wall of moving colour behind them with a Christmas chandelier hanging over the street above. There is no rehearsing that. You stand in the right place, you wait for the tram, and you get one frame.

Bride in a second ivory satin midi dress holding a red heart-shaped clutch, standing with the groom beside the Christmas tree at Café en Seine on Dawson Street, Dublin
The second dress, and the red heart clutch

She changed into an ivory satin midi dress and a red heart-shaped clutch for the night, which is the best second-dress decision I have photographed. It reads as a wedding dress from across a room and it is something you can actually move in at one in the morning.

Bride looking back over her shoulder as she leads the groom by the hand through the barrel-vaulted arcade at Café en Seine on Dawson Street, Dublin
Into Café en Seine, still on Dawson Street

Then into Café en Seine, forty metres further down the same street, and that was the day. No bus, no shuttle, no half hour of standing outside a hotel waiting for transport.

Planning a Unitarian Church Wedding in Dublin

The photographs are the photographs. Here is the practical part, for anyone weighing up a city centre wedding.

The Church

The Unitarian Church is on St Stephen’s Green West, opposite the park, with the Luas Green Line at the door. It is a registered body for solemnising marriages in Ireland and it is well known for marrying couples of any belief or none, which is why it is booked so heavily. Ceremonies are personal rather than prescribed: couples generally have real input into the readings, the music and the shape of the thing. Talk to the church directly about dates, and remember that the state paperwork is separate: the HSE requires at least three months’ notice before the intended marriage date.

Photographically it is a small, bright room, which is the ideal combination. The carved Beatitudes reredos and the stained glass above it give you a background that needs nothing added to it, and the nave is narrow enough that you are never working at distance. In December the church puts a lit tree beside the altar and it becomes the best background in the building.

Everything Within Four Hundred Metres

This is the actual argument for the venue. The church, St Stephen’s Green, Dawson Street, the Shelbourne, the Westbury and a dozen restaurants that will do a private room are all inside a few minutes’ walk of one another.

That does two things. It removes travel time from your timeline, which is the single most common reason weddings run late. And it means that when something takes longer than planned, the day absorbs it instead of collapsing. Donna and Mark used a car for the arrival because they wanted it in the photographs, and then covered the rest of the day on foot.

The December Light

Be honest with yourself about this one. Sunset in Dublin in mid-December is around four in the afternoon. If your ceremony starts at one, you have roughly ninety minutes of daylight after it, and that has to cover confetti, groups and portraits.

The way to handle it is to do everything outdoors in one continuous block straight after the ceremony: confetti on the steps, groups on the steps, then straight across into the park. Do not schedule a drinks reception between the ceremony and the portraits in winter. You will lose the light while people are queuing at a bar.

What you get in return is a set of photographs a summer wedding cannot produce. Frost, bare branches, a frozen lake, Christmas trees in every interior, and the city lit up from four in the afternoon onwards.

Portraits in St Stephen’s Green

Cross the road and you are in the park. The gate lodge in the corner, the stone bridge over the lake, the bandstand and the tree-lined avenues will give you a full and varied portrait set in half an hour, in any season. Bring warm layers you are happy to be photographed in, because you will want them.

The Frame Worth Booking It For

For me it is the tram. The couple in front of a moving Luas at night, under the Christmas lights on a Dublin street, with the whole city smeared into colour behind them. You can photograph a couple in a beautiful set of grounds anywhere in Ireland. You can only get that photograph in the middle of a city, and only if your venues are close enough together that you are still out on the street at nine at night.

Thinking About a Dublin City Wedding?

If you like the idea of a day where nobody boards a bus, where the ceremony, the portraits and the dinner are all within a few hundred metres, and where the city itself is in the photographs, this is the shape of wedding to look at.

Have a read of the best wedding venues in Dublin and the winter wedding photography guide, or see how a completely different Dublin day looked at Orlagh House in the Dublin Mountains.

When you are ready, have a look at wedding photography packages or get in touch and tell me about your day.