St. Thomas More Wedding Photos in Henderson

St. Thomas More Catholic Community is a parish at 130 N. Pecos Road in Henderson, in the middle of Green Valley. By the parish’s own history it started in 1983, when lay women and men who had moved into Green Valley saw that the area needed a parish of its own. They met in a preschool first and then in a mortuary chapel. The Diocese of Las Vegas established it as St. Thomas More Catholic Community in 1986, and the church standing there now was dedicated in September 1996. It belongs to the Archdiocese of Las Vegas.

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 came from one wedding here, so you are seeing one couple’s day, and you are also seeing the whole church: the sanctuary, the plaza, the courtyard and the lawn.

If you have a date at St. Thomas More, or you are 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. Thomas More looks like in photos

The sanctuary is modern and it is white, and that is the single biggest thing to know about photographing here. The ceiling is a set of angled white planes with lights recessed into them, the side walls are white, and the aisle is pale cream tile. All of those surfaces bounce light around the room. Faces come out lit evenly from several directions, nobody ends up with a hard shadow across half of them, and I never have to put a flash on a stand to make the ceremony work.

The light itself is real daylight, which is why it looks the way it does. Tall windows run high along the side wall and there are trees outside them, so what comes into the room is daylight that has already been softened by leaves. You can see it clearly in the black and white frame in the gallery, where the whole congregation is standing and the light is coming across everyone from the left.

The front of the church is the background in every ceremony photo you will get here, so it is worth knowing what it looks like. Behind the altar there is a tall wall of pale limestone with a narrow lit cross running up the middle of it and a carved wooden figure of Christ mounted on the cross. Stained glass panels in blue and green sit at both ends of the side walls. Your vows, your rings and your first kiss all happen in front of that limestone wall, which photographs warm and quiet rather than busy.

Outside, the grounds give you four different backgrounds within a minute of the doors. There is a wide concrete plaza in front of the church, with a sculpted cross set high on the front wall above a deep covered entry. There is the covered entry itself, where heavy square columns hold up a beam roofline and everything underneath is in shade. There is a courtyard with mature trees, a walkway and low stone planter walls to stand or sit on. And there is a strip of lawn along the side of the building, under a run of tall narrow windows with rose colored panes at the top, which is the boldest background on the property and the one you would never guess was there from the street.

What it takes to photograph a wedding at this church

Weddings here are normally at noon

The parish’s matrimony page says weddings are usually scheduled for Saturday at 12:00 pm, and that couples can ask about a different day or time. If you can get a later slot, ask for it. If you cannot, that is fine, and it is worth knowing what a noon ceremony means before the day rather than after it.

Here is what it means. The Mass itself is indoors, so noon changes nothing about your ceremony photos. What it changes is the portraits afterward, because you walk out of the church into the hardest sun of the day, when the light comes straight down and puts shadows under everybody’s eyes. Out in the open in that light, everybody squints.

So I work the shade instead, and this church has enough of it. The covered entry is shaded all the way through. The courtyard trees are shaded. The side of the building away from the sun is shaded. All of the outdoor portraits in the gallery were made in the early afternoon, which is what an early ceremony hands you, and they were made by picking shaded spots rather than by waiting for the light to change.

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 pews. 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. 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, not with the date

Talk to the parish before you set a date. St. Thomas More asks for six to eight months for sacramental formation and preparation, and says how long it takes depends on your circumstances. Your wedding date gets scheduled once you have started that process and met with the pastor, so the parish is part of picking your date from the beginning. Every couple also attends the parish’s Engagement Experience, a preparation program the parish runs for engaged couples.

That lead time helps with 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.

The reception is somewhere else, and the drive costs you photos

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

Henderson keeps those drives short. Green Valley Ranch is a few minutes up the road, and the M Resort and the Revere Golf Club out in Anthem are both on this side of the valley. There is a full list of the Las Vegas venues and locations I photograph at if you are still comparing. If you are looking at Catholic churches in particular, I have a page for St. Francis of Assisi in Henderson as well.

The best time of day for photos at St. Thomas More

The honest answer is that the parish sets your ceremony time and you build everything else around it. What you can decide is where the portraits happen and in what order, and that is what decides how these photos look.

With a noon ceremony, the plan is shade right after the Mass and open sun later, not the other way around. I do the wedding party and the family under the covered entry and in the courtyard while the sun is high, and if there is a gap before the reception, the plaza and the lawn look completely different at the end of the afternoon when the light comes in sideways.

Sunset in Las Vegas moves by more than three hours between June and December, so the same noon ceremony gives you a very different afternoon depending on the month. At a winter wedding the sun is low by mid afternoon, which is when the grounds look their best. A June wedding has hours of high sun to work through first. Once the parish gives you a date, the rest of the day gets built backward from it, and a first look before the Mass gives you back time when the schedule is tight. 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. Thomas More

What I like about photographing here is that the light inside is good before I do anything to it. The white ceiling and the pale walls make the ceremony light easy, the limestone wall behind the altar gives you a background with nothing fighting for attention in it, and the grounds have enough shade that even the noon slot works. The ceremony is indoors and the covered entry has a roof over it, so weather moves 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.