The fierce competition to get married at California’s most popular public buildings

SANTA BARBARA — The late-morning sun peeked through a gauzy veil of fog, bright laughter echoing over the giddy whisper of tulle as the brides posed for pictures outside the Santa Barbara County Courthouse.

Moments earlier, Zoë Weber and Jordan Cantor of Hollywood had traded vows above the compound’s famous Sunken Garden. The brief, heartfelt legal ceremony was made sweeter because the date, June 26, was the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage across the U.S. in 2015.

Minutes before that, their officiant, Santa Barbara County Supervisor Roy Lee, had married off Brittney Hua, 27, and Steven Ly, 26. The Arroyo High School sweethearts made their relationship official that same day 11 years ago, an anniversary that matches their San Gabriel Valley area code, 626.

Lee was soon rushing across the lawn to join Carmen Cardenas Ayon and Santiago Martinez, both 28, who’d come up from Compton for the last-minute wedding of their dreams.

The groom, a bus mechanic, was starting his shift around 4:30 am Wednesday morning when he happened to check the courthouse website for cancellations and saw Friday’s open call event.

“He was like ‘We can get married on Friday in Santa Barbara!’” the bride recalled. “And I was like ‘OK, let’s do it!’”

Less than a decade ago, courthouse weddings were still the purview of camera-shy celebrities, mid-life second marriages and mother-to-be brides. But since the pandemic, their popularity has boomed — transforming certain courthouses and municipal buildings into sought-after locales to tie the knot.

Snagging an appointment to elope has become almost as difficult as scoring Olympics tickets.

In Santa Barbara, marriage appointments open 90 days in advance, with new slots released every hour while the courthouse is open. On a recent weekday, slots in October vanished in less than five minutes.

“They pretty much get picked up as soon as we release them,” said County Clerk Melinda Greene. “We have people from all over the world.”

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Here comes the bride — and another, and another and another… 

So-called “micro weddings” have emerged as an industry unto themselves amid the soaring costs of a traditional ceremony. A recent Bank of America analysis pegged the average cost of an American wedding at $36,000 — significantly more expensive than a year of rent at the median price in Los Angeles, or two years of in-state tuition at UC Berkeley.

“A lot of my elopement brides are low-key and private,” said Asha Marshall of So Fetch Photography, who specializes in courthouse ceremonies. “They don’t want to be spending all that money.”

The shift toward boutique legal ceremonies has transformed the marriage business and the municipal buildings where such nuptials take place, turning elopement from a breezy wedding alternative into a formal contact sport.

“It books up so fast, you have to be online at the exact time [of day] you plan on having your appointment,” explained the photographer, whose viral 2024 snaps helped supercharge the Santa Barbara courthouse’s popularity on social media. “A lot of my brides get stressed out.”

Shuting Zang, 28, is photographed on her wedding day at San Francisco City Hall.

(Sarahbeth Maney / For The Times)

Santa Barbara’s Moorish Revival hall of justice has long been Southern California’s most coveted civil marriage spot. Vice President Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff took their vows in its storied Mural Room in 2014. Reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker were wed on the steps outside in 2022.

But officials say demand has exploded in recent years, thanks in part to Pinterest and TikTok.

“We see dozens a day, starting at 8 o’clock in the morning,” said Lee, the county supervisor and officiant for the day, whose office is across the street. “I see them line up right there outside the doors.”

Ly, the newlywed from El Monte, said that in order to secure their spot at the Santa Barbara courthouse, he and his bride were prepared for an experience akin to buying stadium tour tickets.

“Both of us were on two separate computers, each of us trying to copy and paste the details so we could get in early,” he said.

“I let him do the first one,” his wife, Hua, said. “He didn’t get it, so I did the second one and I got it.”

Others, including Amy Rodriguez, were left scrounging for cancellations.

“I decided one night, let me double check if there’s an opening,” the bride said as she waited for her groom-to-be near the front entrance to the courthouse, where wedding parties must pass through a metal detector. “I logged in — it was literally midnight, maybe one o’clock — and got the slot.”

The race to the clerk’s window is not limited to Santa Barbara. Other popular courthouses such as the L.A. County Courthouse in Beverly Hills and the Old County Courthouse in Santa Ana have seen a similar spikes in demand.

But no municipal building in the state compares to San Francisco City Hall, where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio tied the knot in 1954.

Elias Salem, 33, left, and Samuel Tyler, 33, of San Francisco pose after being married at San Francisco City Hall.

(Sarahbeth Maney / For The Times)

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Today, the gilded Beaux-Arts building sees as many as 7,000 marriage ceremonies a year. That’s two-thirds again more than its Santa Barbara rival, which does about 4,000, and roughly the same number as take place at the Norwalk headquarters of the Los Angeles County Registrar, a top contender for the country’s busiest wedding venue after New York’s Manhattan Marriage Bureau and the Office of Civil Marriages in Las Vegas.

“Over the last three to four years it’s been really dramatic,” said Cheri Tran, a popular elopement photographer in San Francisco. “When I did my first City Hall elopement six or seven years ago, we were only dodging 20 or 30 people. Now it’s hundreds.”

The TikTok-driven crowds leave many locals in the lurch. Tran nudges her brides toward the Marin County Civic Center, Frank Lloyd Wright’s final public building. Others, like photographer Anna Perlman, encourage “adventure elopements” in Joshua Tree or Big Sur.

Officials, too, have sought creative ways to relieve the pressure. On the last Friday in June, San Francisco and Santa Barbara both opened their books to scores of additional couples, ushering in a brief return to the romance of last-minute marriage.

“There were simultaneously four or five couples trying to take a picture on the staircase,” said newlywed Daniel Tran, 28, who chanced upon one of the extra slots opened for San Francisco’s annual Pride wedding event. “One of our witnesses took a picture, and you could see couples on every floor getting married. It was a little jarring.”

Newlywed couples wait their turn for photos on the grand staircase during the busiest wedding day of the year at San Francisco City Hall.

(Sarahbeth Maney / For The Times)

A similar scene played out in Santa Barbara, where officials agreed to marry couples without an appointment for “Palindrome Day,” a sought-after anniversary that reads the same backwards and forwards.

“This is the first time we’ve ever done no appointments out here,” Greene said. “We authorized overtime and we’re gonna take short lunches and we’re just gonna get as many as we can through.”

By 11 a.m., the building’s lush courtyard was aflutter with white dresses and mascara-streaked tissues, cameras snapping from every angle as clerks flitted back and forth with marriage licenses.

Some, like the El Monte couple, had planned their nuptials for months. Others, like the pair from Compton, had pulled their ceremony together virtually overnight.

But few had managed an eleventh-hour affair quite as swiftly as Susie Villacis and Gaspar Garcia Jr., who cruised into town around 2 a.m. Friday morning after hunting down an all-inclusive civil ceremony from halfway across the state.

“To be honest, it was last minute — it was yesterday,” the bride said of the decision to marry in Santa Barbara.

With their Catholic wedding in Ecuador looming, the San Francisco couple needed a license and a civil ceremony ASAP.

“We were going to get married at San Francisco City Hall, but the earliest appointment was September,” Villacis said. “This was the only place we could do everything in one go.”

Lee, the county supervisor, was happy to oblige. The black-robed officiant led the pair through their wedding vows, pronouncing them husband and wife as their mothers looked on with tears in their eyes.

Garcia dipped Villacis for a dramatic first kiss. Then the trio posed for a selfie.