Melbourne Registry Office Photographer | A Guide to Getting Married at the Old Treasury Building

There is something I really like about a Melbourne Registry wedding.

You can strip away a lot of the stuff that comes with planning a traditional wedding and keep the good bits. Get married, bring your favourite people, wander around the city for a while, then go somewhere great to eat.

It can be as simple as that.

The Victorian Marriage Registry is inside the Old Treasury Building on Spring Street, right on the edge of the Melbourne CBD. It's a beautiful old building in its own right, but what makes it particularly good for a small wedding is everything around it.

You have Treasury Gardens next door, Parliament House up the road, trams going past, old buildings, bars, restaurants and plenty of Melbourne happening around you.

Rather than treating the Registry as somewhere to quickly do the legal part before moving onto the "real" wedding, I think you can make the whole thing part of the day.

What is a Melbourne Registry wedding actually like?

The Victorian Marriage Registry offers both Classic and Legal-only ceremonies at the Old Treasury Building.

If you want something incredibly simple, the Legal-only option does exactly what it says. It's the minimum required to legally get married, with the two of you and your two witnesses. A professional photographer can also be there.

The Registry also offers Classic ceremonies if you'd like to bring more people and make a little more of the ceremony itself.

There are two main ceremony rooms.

The Thomas Hyde Room is the tiny one, with space for the couple and eight guests, plus your photographer and celebrant. There's a fireplace and it feels particularly suited to a very small wedding.

The Margaret Craig Room is larger and allows up to 55 guests, so you can still have a fairly substantial group of people there without organising a traditional wedding venue.

Both are inside the Old Treasury Building at 20 Spring Street.

The ceremony can be the beginning of the day, not the whole day

This is probably my biggest piece of advice.

If you're choosing a Registry wedding because you don't want a huge traditional wedding, you don't need to replace it with two hours of formal wedding portraits afterwards.

Think about what you'd genuinely enjoy doing together.

Maybe you get married in the morning and go for a long lunch.

Maybe everyone walks to a bar afterwards and you disappear for twenty minutes of photographs before joining them.

You could catch a tram through the city, have champagne somewhere, stop for coffee, walk through the gardens or book the private room at a restaurant you love.

Your wedding doesn't have to happen in one venue.

Melbourne itself can become part of it.

What if it rains?

Very possible. It's Melbourne.

I wouldn't let a rainy forecast send you into a panic.

There are covered areas around the city, including the large portico at Parliament House, and plenty of bars, cafés and hotels nearby. If you want to use a particular business for photographs, I'd always ask them beforehand rather than assuming they'll be happy to host a photoshoot.

But I also wouldn't spend the whole day hiding from the weather.

Bring a couple of good umbrellas and use it.

Wet streets, headlights, people huddling beneath awnings and running across roads can give a Registry wedding a completely different atmosphere.

It becomes part of what happened that day rather than something we need to disguise.

Where to take photos after a Melbourne Registry wedding

You really don't need to travel far.

With Nell and Alexander, we simply headed out from the Registry and let Melbourne give us the backdrop. That's probably my favourite way to photograph these weddings. Rather than having a list of ten locations we need to get through, we can walk, stop when the light is good and let whatever is happening in the city become part of the photographs.

The Old Treasury Building itself is beautiful, so I'd always spend a little time there first. The steps, big wooden doors and old stone exterior give us plenty to work with before we've even left.

Treasury Gardens are immediately next door if you want some greenery. Walk the other way and you have Parliament House, with its huge stone steps and columns.

And then there's Spring Street itself.

Trams going past. People crossing the road. Traffic. Shopfronts. The slightly messy bits in between locations.

You don't necessarily need Melbourne to look empty for it to look beautiful. Sometimes having the city carrying on around you is what makes the photographs feel like you really got married there.

A Registry elopement photographed entirely on film

Nell being a photographer herself made this part particularly lovely.

She already knew she wanted film.

Not because she wanted the photographs to look artificially "vintage", but because she loves the way film records things. The colour, grain, movement and little imperfections. Photographs that don't feel tied to whatever editing style happens to be popular right now. Timeless.

We photographed their entire elopement on 35mm and medium format film.

And for a day like this, I think it makes so much sense.

There isn't a huge production happening around you. It's two people getting married, walking through a city that means something to them and taking their family along for it afterwards through the photographs.

That last part felt especially important for Nell and Alexander.

Their loved ones weren't physically there, so their gallery became a way of showing them more than simply we got married. They could see where they walked, what Nell wore, the ring that belonged to her grandmother, the little interactions between the two of them and what Melbourne looked like around them that day.

That's the kind of thing I want a wedding gallery to do anyway.

Not just prove that it happened.

Let people into it.

How much photography do you need for a Registry wedding?

You probably don't need eight or ten hours.

For a very small ceremony, a couple of hours can cover quite a lot. The ceremony itself, congratulations afterwards, family photographs and time wandering around Melbourne together.

If you're turning it into more of a day, you might want photography to start while you're getting ready or continue through drinks and dinner.

I'd decide based on what you want photographed, rather than assuming a small wedding automatically means you only need an hour or two.

Sometimes the photographs that end up mattering most aren't from the ceremony at all.

A little note about photographs inside the Registry

Professional photographers are allowed at Victorian Marriage Registry ceremonies, including Legal-only ceremonies.

Your guests are allowed to photograph and film the ceremony too.

If you're hoping for photographs elsewhere inside the Old Treasury Building museum, that's slightly different. Personal photography is permitted in the exhibition spaces without flash, but commercial photography requires permission from the Old Treasury Building.

What could a Melbourne Registry wedding day actually look like?

Something like this:

Get ready together at a beautiful hotel.

Walk or catch a tram to the Old Treasury Building.

Meet your family outside.

Get married.

Champagne on the steps.

A few photographs with everyone while they're already together.

Then let your guests head towards the restaurant while we take the long way there.

Walk through Treasury Gardens. Stop at Parliament. Catch a tram. Have a drink somewhere along the way.

Meet everyone again for dinner.

Good food, a long table, speeches if you want them, no speeches if you don't.

Done.

Or do something completely different.

That's really the appeal of a Registry wedding. There isn't much of a template unless you decide to give yourself one.

Planning a Melbourne Registry Office wedding?

If you're getting married at the Victorian Marriage Registry and looking for a Melbourne Registry Office photographer, I'd love to hear what you're planning.

I photograph intimate weddings and elopements entirely on analogue film, with a mix of 35mm and medium format.

Your plan can be incredibly simple or a little unconventional.

Tell me what you're thinking and we can go from there.

I hope this feature has provided you with some handy insights into a Registry Office Wedding. If you’d like to see more of my work, please feel welcome to check out my wedding portfolio

If you’re looking for a film wedding photographer in Melbourne, you can find more about how I approach weddings here