Wedding photographer in San Sebastián

A wedding photographer in San Sebastián works with a city that has already done the hard part. Civil ceremonies are held in the Salón de Plenos of the city hall, a building that opened as the Gran Casino in 1887 and still looks the part, on the Alderdi Eder gardens at the edge of the bay. Walk out of the door and La Concha is right there, lit evenly by a north-facing sky, so the portraits after the ceremony do not have to wait for a kinder hour. What needs planning is the length of the day. Ten hours of coverage on a June Saturday run from the getting ready in the morning to a sunset close to ten at night, and the couple portraits are best split in two: a few minutes on the balustrade straight after the ceremony, and the rest out west at the Peine del Viento while the guests sit down to dinner.

When to book in San Sebastián

June to September is the reliable stretch, and September is the month couples ask for first: the sea is at its warmest and the evenings are still long. Two weeks complicate the calendar. Semana Grande in mid-August fills every bed in the province, and the film festival in the second half of September does much the same to the hotels; guests travelling for either week need rooms booked very early. Late summer is also when the galerna can blow in, so any outdoor plan carries a covered fallback. On the day itself the light is kind from the morning on, and the hour that matters is the last one. In June the sun sets close to ten, so the portraits at the Peine del Viento fall inside the party rather than before it. From October the weather turns milder and wetter and the days shorten, which suits a smaller wedding with the celebration indoors.