Las Vegas Temple Wedding Photos

The Las Vegas Nevada Temple sits at 827 Temple View Drive, up on the east side of the valley below Frenchman Mountain, roughly fifteen to twenty five minutes from the Strip depending on how the freeway is behaving. It was dedicated in December 1989 and was the first temple built in Nevada. Six white spires, the tallest of them about 119 feet with a gold statue on top, a copper roof, and around ten acres of lawns, date palms and paved walkways wrapped around the building.

Here is the thing everybody planning one of these days already knows and every photographer has to say out loud anyway: nothing is photographed inside. Not the sealing, not by me, not by your uncle with his phone. So the pictures you will have from your wedding day are the pictures made out on those grounds, which means the grounds are not a backdrop. They are the whole shoot.

I’m McKenzie. I’ve photographed weddings in Las Vegas every year since 2010, more than 300 of them, and temple days are their own kind of day. Every photo on this page came from the grounds here, from two different weddings, so you are seeing what a couple actually walks away with.

If you have a date at the temple, send me a message and tell me about it. I’d love to hear how you’re putting the day together.

What a Las Vegas Nevada Temple wedding looks like in photos

The doors are the moment. You come out married, into two lines of people who have been standing in the sun waiting for you, and they lose it. That frame in the gallery, the one with the flower girl on one side and about twenty relatives clapping on the other, took a few seconds to happen. It is the picture most families frame.

After that the grounds open up and the day slows down. The paved walkways run between rows of date palms with low flowering shrubs at their feet, and the sun comes through those fronds in a way that lights the back of a veil beautifully. A long lace train looks incredible on those pavers. There is a round paver plaza tucked into the trees on one side, quieter, greener, better for the bride alone and for the two of you close together with nobody watching.

Then there is the lawn. That is where you get the temple itself in the frame, white stone and spires and the gold statue against the sky, with the two of you small on the grass in front of it. That is the photo that says where you got married without anybody having to caption it.

And the palms do something else worth knowing. They are tall enough to hold the building at a distance, so you can shoot a whole set of portraits here where you would never guess a temple was thirty feet away. Half the pictures in this gallery could be a garden. That variety in one location is unusual, and it is why an hour on these grounds gets you a gallery that does not feel repetitive.

What it takes to photograph a wedding at the temple

Build the day around the doors, not around a ceremony

Most wedding timelines hang off the ceremony start time. Yours cannot, because the part everyone else builds around is the part with no photos in it.

So the timeline gets built around the moment you come out. I want to be outside and set well before the doors open, with the family already gathered where the light is good and someone briefed on where to stand. The exit does not repeat. There is no second take, no walking back in and coming out again, and no way to fix a bad position after the fact, which is the single biggest difference between photographing a temple wedding and photographing a church one.

The grounds are open, and other people are on them

The grounds are open to visitors for self guided walking, so on a nice Saturday you are not the only ones out there. That is fine. It has never once been a problem in a photo, because the grounds are big and the good spots are spread out, and a small amount of patience clears almost any frame.

It does mean it helps to have somebody who already knows where those spots are instead of wandering the property in a wedding dress figuring it out. Anything specific about what is permitted on the day is a question for the temple office, not for me, and they are the ones who should answer it.

The reception is somewhere else, so the drive is part of the plan

There is no reception space here, so whatever happens after the grounds happens at another address, and the drive between the two is real time that has to live in the timeline. Tell me both addresses up front and I will build around it, including whether the family photos happen here on the lawn or at the reception site later.

The best time of day for photos at the temple

Your sealing time is fixed by the temple, so the honest answer is that you work with what you are given. What you can control is what happens after.

A morning sealing is the easy one. You come out into soft light, the palms are still throwing long shadows across the walkways, and the lawn has not gone harsh yet.

A midday sealing is the one that needs a plan, because overhead sun on white stone is bright. The answer is the trees. The paver plaza and the walkways under the palms both have real shade in them at noon, and that is where the slow portraits go while the open lawn waits for later.

Late afternoon is the prettiest and the most seasonal. Sunset in Las Vegas moves by more than three hours between June and December, so an afternoon sealing in July gives you hours of good light afterward and the same time in December gives you about forty minutes. If your day is tight, a first look on the grounds before the sealing buys back most of what you need, and if you would rather not, here is how I build a timeline without one.

If you’re getting married at the Las Vegas Nevada Temple

What I like about photographing here is how much the day rests on real feeling rather than on staging. There is no aisle to shoot, no first kiss to catch, no decorated room. There is a door, the people who love you standing outside it, and a lot of beautiful ground to walk. That is plenty.

I’m the photographer at every wedding I book, so nobody gets sent in my place. My rate is $300 an hour when you book two hours or more, and temple couples usually land somewhere between three hours and a full day depending on how big the reception is. There is more about how I work on my wedding photography page, and every rate is on the pricing page. If you are comparing other ceremony sites around the valley, I have pages for St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox and Trinity Life Center in Las Vegas, and for St. Thomas More and St. Francis of Assisi in Henderson.

I hold a date once your ceremony is confirmed. So as soon as you have your time at the temple, email me at mckenzie@msweddingimage.com or send me a message here. Tell me the date, the sealing time and where the reception is, and we’ll go from there.