St. Francis of Assisi Wedding Photos in Henderson

St. Francis of Assisi is a Catholic parish in Henderson, at 2300 Sunridge Heights Parkway, and it belongs to the Archdiocese of Las Vegas. The campus is built like a small mission. Tan stucco and stacked stone under red tile roofs, a freestanding bell tower with two bells hanging in it, and a wide paved plaza with a fountain in the middle that ties the buildings to each other.

I’m McKenzie. I’ve photographed weddings in Las Vegas every year since 2010, more than 300 of them, and Catholic ceremonies are a real part of that work. Every photo on this page was made at St. Francis, at two different ceremonies, so what you’re looking at is the church itself rather than one couple’s best day.

If you have a date here, or you’re about to ask the parish for one, send me a message and tell me about it. I’d love to hear what you have planned.

What a wedding at St. Francis of Assisi looks like in photos

Inside, the church is warm, and that colors every photo taken in it. The walls are a deep gold plaster, the ceiling is open wood plank with the beams showing, and the floor is polished concrete that throws light back up into the room. The result is light with honey in it, arriving from several directions at once. Faces are lit evenly, nobody sits in a hard shadow, and I don’t have to add anything to the room to make it work.

The front of the church is the other thing to know about, because it is the background in every ceremony photo you will get here. Behind the altar there is a painted wall in pale blue and coral with a crucifix in the center arch and a statue standing in each of the arched niches beside it. Your vows, your rings and your first kiss as a married couple all happen in front of something with color and detail in it instead of a flat wall. The seating is light wood chairs rather than fixed pews, which is why the aisle photos in the gallery have tulle bows tied along both sides.

Outside, the plaza does the job a garden does at other venues. It is a big open square of banded concrete with the stone fountain at the center, the bell tower standing on one side and the arched church entry on the other. There is room to walk, to turn, to swing a skirt, and the tower and the rooflines give you a background from almost any angle you point a camera. Several of the portraits in the gallery were made within about ten steps of each other out there, and they don’t look like the same photo.

The last piece is the covered walkway along the side of the church. Open wood beams overhead, tall windows down one wall, vines climbing the columns, and the hills of the valley showing at the far end of it. The beams lay stripes of light across the pavers and the whole length of it is shaded, so it is where I go when the sun is high and every open surface has gone harsh. One of the couples in the gallery did their first look there.

What it takes to photograph a wedding at this church

Ask the parish what a photographer is allowed to do

Every Catholic parish sets its own rules for photographers during a wedding Mass, and they differ from church to church. Some ask the photographer to stay behind the first row of seats. Some ask for no flash once the ceremony has begun. Some limit where you can stand during the processional. None of that is hard to work around, and all of it needs to be known before the day.

So ask the parish office and the priest who is marrying you what their rules are, and tell me the answer. That is a real question with a real answer, and the parish is the only place to get it. Then I build the coverage around what they allow. Everything I shot inside this church was made with the light that was already in the room, which is the habit that makes those rules easy to live with.

Start with the parish office, not with the date

Talk to the parish before you set a date. The parish’s own sacraments page asks couples to get in touch as soon as they are engaged, because at least six months is normally what it takes to finish marriage preparation. There is a Marriage Information Meeting to attend first, and you make an appointment with a priest after that.

The Archdiocese of Las Vegas puts it more bluntly: do not set a wedding date until you have spoken with the pastor of the parish where the wedding will take place. Anyone who has been married before, in a church or at a courthouse, meets with a priest ahead of the information meeting to sort out freedom to marry.

That six month runway is useful for photography too. A church date usually gets settled earlier than a reception venue does, which means you can settle a photographer earlier as well. I hold a date once your ceremony is confirmed, so as soon as the parish gives you one, reach out and I’ll tell you straight away whether I’m free.

There is a school on the same campus

St. Francis of Assisi shares its property with St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School, a PreK through 8 school at the same address. That matters mostly on weekdays. If you are looking at a Friday afternoon ceremony, ask the parish about school pickup and about where your guests should park, because the plaza and the lots sit between the church and the school.

A Saturday ceremony avoids all of that. Saturdays carry Masses of their own on the parish calendar, though, so the ceremony time is something the parish fits around its own schedule rather than something you pick freely. If you want the plaza quiet for portraits, ask them for the earliest slot they will give you.

Most couples drive to a reception, and the drive costs you photos

The parish is a church, so the party happens somewhere else. Every minute in a car comes out of your portrait time, which makes the distance between the two addresses a photography decision and not only a logistics one.

Henderson gives you short drives. Green Valley Ranch, the Revere Golf Club out in Anthem and the M Resort are all on this side of the valley, within about fifteen minutes of the church. There is a full list of the Las Vegas venues and locations I photograph at if you are still comparing.

The best time of day for photos at St. Francis of Assisi

Try to have the ceremony end within about two hours of sunset. Church weddings usually hand you a fixed slot, and that is fine. What the timing decides is where your portraits land, and the plaza looks best in the last hour of daylight, when the sun comes in sideways instead of straight down and the stone on the bell tower turns warm.

A late morning Mass is the harder case, and it survives here in a way it would not at an outdoor venue. The walkway is shaded end to end, the arch under the bell tower is shaded, and the church interior is shaded whatever the sun is doing. So if your ceremony is at eleven, we work the walkway and the arch and leave the open plaza alone, and the photos still look like this place.

Sunset in Las Vegas moves by more than three hours between June and December, so the same clock time is a completely different wedding depending on the month. Once the parish gives you a date and a time, the rest of the day gets built backward from it. A late ceremony in winter is the case where a first look before the Mass buys back the daylight, and that is exactly what one of the couples in the gallery did on the walkway. If you would rather save that moment for the aisle, here is how I build a wedding timeline without a first look.

If you’re getting married at St. Francis of Assisi

What I like about photographing here is that the church has already solved the light. The gold walls and the wood ceiling make the ceremony easy, the shaded walkway makes any hour of the day workable, and the plaza is a finished portrait spot thirty seconds from the doors. The ceremony is indoors and the walkway has a roof over it, so weather changes where we shoot the portraits and nothing else.

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 eight hours is what most couples choose for a full wedding day. There’s more about how I work on my wedding photography page, and every rate is on the pricing page.

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