Boston Public Library Wedding Video: Courtyard to Bates Hall

Katelyn and Adam were married at the Boston Public Library in March, and their evening followed the plan the library puts first in its own wedding guide: a ceremony in the courtyard, dinner in Bates Hall under the green reading lamps, and dancing in the Abbey Room. Three spaces with three completely different looks, all inside the McKim Building on Copley Square.

Nearly everything about filming a wedding here comes back to one fact. This is a working public library, and it only becomes yours once it has closed for the day.

Katelyn & Adam Boston Public Library Highlight Video

The library is yours after it closes

The Central Library is open to the public until 5pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and until 8pm the rest of the week. Under the library’s event procedures, setup normally can’t begin until it has closed, and every plan in its 2026 wedding guide that includes a ceremony starts it at 7pm: guests in from 6:45, cocktails at 7:30, dinner at 8:30 and dancing from 10 until midnight.

So a library wedding is an evening wedding, and what the sky is doing at 7pm decides what your ceremony looks like. We took the US Naval Observatory’s sunset and twilight times for the McKim Building for every Saturday of 2027:

On 24 of 2027’s 52 Saturdays, a 7pm ceremony at the library starts after dark, and that includes every Saturday in October. Eighteen, from late April to late August, are in full daylight. The ten in between are the ones to look at closely: the sun goes down during the ceremony or just before it, and the courtyard changes from daylight to lamplight while you are standing in it.

That is what happened at Katelyn and Adam’s wedding. When we filmed them by the flowers before the ceremony there was still daylight in the courtyard; by the time they kissed it was dark, and the lights along the foot of the walls were doing the work.

Their date shows a useful quirk of the calendar, too. The library offers a discount on January-to-March and Sunday bookings (10 percent in its current pricing guide, excluding holiday weekends), and the clocks go forward in the middle of March. In 2027 that makes March 20 and March 27 the only discounted Saturdays when a 7pm ceremony isn’t in the dark. A Sunday between late April and late August gets you the discount and daylight together.

The courtyard

The courtyard is the centre of the McKim Building, enclosed on all four sides and ringed by an arcade. The library allows 200 guests for a ceremony there, with more seating on the upper terrace. Its general schedule has the fountain running from May to October and the courtyard planted in June, though it confirms both each spring and doesn’t guarantee either.

The bronze on the fountain comes with a story. Charles McKim, the building’s architect, gave Frederick MacMonnies’ Bacchante and Infant Faun to the library in the 1890s in memory of his late wife. A naked bacchante in the public library caused such a controversy that McKim withdrew the gift, and she went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York instead. A century later, during a renovation of the courtyard, the library had a copy made and brought her home. She is just behind Katelyn and Adam when they kiss.

For a film, the courtyard is an outdoor ceremony with walls. It is open to the sky, so ask the library about the wet-weather plan when you book; our Saturday rain odds by month will tell you how likely you are to need it. Katelyn and Adam had a microphone on a stand for the ceremony and speakers under the arcade, and in the open air we would always suggest both.

Bates Hall

Bates Hall runs the length of the building under a 50-foot barrel vault. Much of it is original, including the tables and bookcases; the green lamps have been restored to their 1895 look, and busts of authors line the walls. The library seats up to 330 there for dinner.

You eat at the reading tables. At Katelyn and Adam’s wedding the linens were laid either side of the lamps, with the wood showing down the middle, and guests sat on the library’s wooden chairs. Nowhere else in Boston looks like it on film: each table lit by its own lamps, and the room rising away into shadow above them.

Those lamps and the globe lights along the walls are the light in the room at night, which suits a film: warm, low and flattering at table height. The toasts happen in pools of lamplight, and so did Katelyn and Adam’s dance together in the aisle between the tables, with everyone still seated, before the party moved to the Abbey Room.

The staircase and the Abbey Room

The main staircase rises from the entrance lobby toward Bates Hall, with walls of yellow Siena marble that McKim chose piece by piece and a pair of marble lions commissioned by veterans of two Massachusetts regiments that fought in the Civil War. Katelyn and Adam’s florist filled it with potted greenery, white flowering branches and candles, and it gave the film one of its best shots: the two of them coming down it together.

One rule to give your florist early: the library allows no live flame anywhere in the building. Votives, tapers and even enclosed candles are all out, so every candle at a library wedding is flameless.

The Abbey Room is where the dancing goes in the library’s Bates Hall plan. It is the darkest of the three spaces, panelled in dark wood under Edwin Austin Abbey’s murals of the quest for the Holy Grail, over a checkerboard floor. It seats 100, or 70 with a dance floor, so at a larger wedding it is a room for dancing rather than dinner. After dinner the band or DJ’s lighting does most of the work in there, which is worth knowing when you book them: for the last two hours, their lighting is your film’s lighting.

Portraits are outside, while the library is open

With the building closed to you until the evening, your daylight portraits happen outside while the library is still open to the public. Katelyn and Adam’s were on the front steps on Dartmouth Street and in the crosswalks of Back Bay, with people coming out of the library behind them. The library’s own procedures warn that others may be gathered in the streets and plazas around Copley Square, and they usually are. We think it adds something, because it is unmistakably Boston, but allow more time than you would at a private venue.

They saw each other before the ceremony, privately, which is what made daylight portraits possible at all. For any date from late August to mid-April, when the sun is down by the end of a 7pm ceremony, a first look is the only way to get daylight portraits of the two of you.

Marrying somewhere else but want the library in your film? It rents private photography sessions outside opening hours, with weekday mornings starting at $750 on its most recent flyer.

What the library charges

The library publishes its own estimates. These are the site fees in its 2026 wedding guide for a courtyard ceremony and cocktail hour, followed by dinner and dancing in the rooms shown:

The site fee covers the rooms for four hours and the library’s own staff. Food and drink come from The Catered Affair, the library’s caterer of record, and are priced separately, and the pricing guide lists extras such as a $1,300 wedding set-up fee. Every vendor also needs the library’s approval: your list goes in at least 45 days before the wedding, and each vendor, us included, files a certificate of insurance naming the City of Boston and the library.

The one-hour ceremony

The library also runs a One-Hour Wedding Ceremony on selected Mondays. From January 2027 it moves to McKim Exhibition Hall and costs $300 for up to 18 guests, with dates released by lottery three months ahead; the lottery for March 2027 opens on December 1. It is a lovely, simple way to marry somewhere extraordinary. But outside vendors are limited to one officiant and one photographer, so there is no room for a videographer. If you want it on film, talk to the Special Events Office before you apply.

Planning notes

• Choose your date with the table above. Late April to late August gives you a ceremony in daylight; from October to mid-March, the courtyard by lamplight is guaranteed.
• For any date from late August to mid-April, do a first look, and take your portraits outside before the library closes.
• Tell your florist and planner early that every candle has to be flameless.
• The library asks to discuss lighting at least a month ahead, and the options are limited in a landmark building. Bring your band or DJ’s lighting plan into that conversation.
• Ask about the courtyard’s wet-weather plan when you book.
• Guests come in through the event entrance at 230 Dartmouth Street.
• Drone footage of the building needs FAA authorization, which is automatic up to 150 feet here except around Red Sox and Harvard football home games. Our drone guide has the details.
• A second videographer earns their keep here: the ceremony, dinner and dancing are in three different spaces, and the moves between them are some of the best moments of the night.

The Boston Public Library is one of the venues in our guide to Boston wedding venues, and our Boston sunset table has the light for every month of 2027. You can watch more city weddings in our gallery, see what each collection includes, or tell us about your day.