The Columns Wedding Photographer

The Columns has stood on St. Charles Avenue since 1883. Built as a private house, boarding house through the First World War, hotel by the fifties, and on the National Register of Historic Places the whole way. The restoration a few years back cleaned it up without sanding off what made it worth keeping.

You feel that the moment you're inside. Dark woodwork. Walls hung salon-style, floor to ceiling. Chandeliers in rooms that were never built to hold them. Tall windows on every floor, deep shade under the gallery, and a front porch that has been the best seat on St. Charles for over a century. Oaks closing overhead. The streetcar going by.

Nothing about it is neutral. Most venues hand you white walls and ask you to bring the atmosphere. The Columns already has more of it than a wedding needs.The food and drink available for your wedding will stand up to any fine dining restaurant in the city, and it’s all under the same roof.

The Columns seen from the neutral ground on St. Charles Avenue during and evening wedding.

THE ROOMS

The building gives you a different world every twenty feet. The second-floor front room, a time capsule of vintage furniture and enormous windows. The library. The Chapel Room. The Tea Room. The ballroom, all columns and gold light. The upstairs balcony looking down the avenue. The side courtyards give a sense of privacy for your guests to converse and step out of the main the party for a beat.

Almost no venue in New Orleans changes character that many times inside one afternoon. It means a day here never looks like one location. It looks like six.

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO PHOTOGRAPH HERE

The day starts on the second floor, in that front room. Light comes through the windows soft enough that I don't have to do anything to it. Getting ready there gives a look most venues can't hand you. Enough space for a large wedding party, and soft directional light that floods the room with dimension and drama. I’d also recommend doing the first look here too.

A bride and groom together by the window in an upstairs room at The Columns in New Orleans

From there, the balcony. The courtyard is usually still being set for the ceremony, so the balcony is where family portraits happen typically. Nobody in the way, nothing half-built behind you, and enough space for a large family group.

The bar in the hour before is worth watching. People arrive, find each other, order a drink, and forget anyone is looking. Some of the best frames of the day come out of that hour and none of them are posed. The anticipation is building.

Then the courtyard. Shaded the whole way through, so the light holds instead of blowing out, and the space gives you more to work with than just the two of you at the front. Guests close on both sides. The building behind. A recessional with everyone on their feet sometimes straight to a second line. The band can setup right on the street.

I've photographed more weddings at The Columns than almost anywhere else in New Orleans. I'm not learning the building on your wedding day. I know which room the light is in late in the afternoon, where family photos go when the courtyard isn't ready, and which fifteen minutes are worth protecting. Nobody is scouting during your cocktail hour.