When we first learned that Diana and Daniel’s wedding will be taking place at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco we knew right away to expect an elegant and stylish day. Their engagement session at Embarcadero was just awesome and we learned that they’re up for pretty much any crazy & creative idea we have :)

On the wedding day we went to the Legion of Honor for portraits and had a ton of fun there! One of the benefits of having a slightly off-season wedding is that you can pick a very popular, usually crowded, location for your photos and still be the only wedding party there. We still had a bit of time left before the ceremony started and we decided to also roam the Palace Hotel for portrait locations.

We love shooting in older San Francisco hotels with their antique benches and sofas, big lobbies, lush greenery, awesome mirrors, columns and curtains. We could literally spend hours and hours with the variety of scenes and backgrounds available.

This Palace Hotel wedding had a Chuppah ceremony held in the Sunset Court where we absolutely loved the beautifully tall domed-glass ceilings.

This hotel simply exudes luxury in every way and the reception at the charming Grand Ballroom was prepped with gorgeous details, a great band, and some colorful lighting which added great colors to the backgrounds of all the reception shots.

As a special performance, a belly dancer was invited to entertain and dazzle the audience with her abilities:

This was the last wedding of the year for Choco Studio and we are happy to have shot such a spectacular event for our season finale. We are very much looking forward to some down time, spending more time with friends, snowboarding in Tahoe, planning our own wedding, and even going to a couple of very tropical destinations :) The break in between the weddings is not for long, however, and next year’s events are starting right up again in January!

Jen and Nino met while on the job and the fascinating part of this story is what they do for a living: Nino is a San Mateo Firefighter and Jen is a Paramedic. They met while working together on the same call and the rest, as they say, is history. This couple has a fantastic chemistry between them and we’ve been looking forward to shooting their wedding photos ever since their fun and stylish engagement session on the Embarcadero this summer.

On their wedding day, the ceremony was held at the Trinity Lutheran Church and the reception took place at a San Mateo wedding venue called the Peninsula Social Club. This is a spacious and beautifully decorated venue and it was great to be photographing a local San Mateo wedding.

It was really special to see the groom’s parents share a kiss when Jen and Nino were announced to be husband and wife:

One of the many highlights of the day was when their friends brought out a classic fire engine to use for the photographs. We could have probably spent another several hours just shooting their portraits on and around this gorgeous vehicle.

The most original grand entrance ever goes to this couple:

Congratulations to you, Nino and Jen!! We wish you guys all the best.

Happy Friday everyone! We have a couple of shots for you as a preview to Jen and Nino’s wedding from last weekend. The full blog post will be ready by Monday, but for now, we wanted to share a teaser:

We recently had yet another super-fun photo session on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. And for these engagement photos the couple brought along their adorable dog She-Ra! The five of us walked all around the waterfront and found all kinds of great settings for their shots.

Diana and Daniel’s big day is coming up in just one short week now and we can’t wait. For now, enjoy some of our faves from this session:

Have a great weekend everyone :)