The Harvard Club of Boston on film, through a wedding we shot at the Back Bay clubhouse: a fireplace ceremony, the grand staircase and Commonwealth Avenue.

Search for a Harvard Club of Boston wedding and you will find photographers’ galleries, and not much else. They show you the rooms. A film needs to know something different: how the rooms change from one part of the day to the next, where to put the first look, and what is waiting outside the front door.

Nick and Cara married at the club’s Back Bay clubhouse in the colder months, when the trees on Commonwealth Avenue are bare. Their film takes in much of the building, from the ceremony room to the great hall, and a good stretch of the street outside.

The clubhouse at 374 Commonwealth

The Harvard Club of Boston was founded in 1908 by twenty-two Harvard alumni. It has two clubhouses: one downtown at One Federal Street, and the Back Bay clubhouse on Commonwealth Avenue, where Nick and Cara married. The Back Bay building finished a $16 million renovation in 2015, and its main room, Harvard Hall, was named Best Ballroom by Boston magazine in 2017.

A bride and groom at the front door of the Harvard Club of Boston, between stone columns, with the number 374 above the door

The front door is worth a minute of your day. Between its stone columns, with the number 374 above it, it says exactly where you are without a caption.

Two rooms, two moods

The club gives you two very different kinds of room, and Nick and Cara used both. Their ceremony was in a white-panelled room hung with portraits and lit by chandeliers, with a black-and-white checkerboard floor and the chairs set facing a fireplace dressed with white flowers. It is a bright room, and on film it reads as formal and clean.

A white-panelled room at the Harvard Club of Boston set for a wedding ceremony, with portraits on the walls, chandeliers and a black-and-white checkerboard floor

The reception was the opposite: the great wood-panelled hall, with its tall ceilings and chandeliers, darker and warmer. It makes an intimate, classical-looking film rather than a bright, airy one, which we also say in our guide to the best wedding venues in Boston. Going from one room to the other is the moment the day turns from ceremony to celebration, and Nick and Cara marked it by coming into the hall through its tall wooden doors.

A bride and groom sharing their first dance in the wood-panelled hall at the Harvard Club of Boston, with guests at tables around them

The staircase

The club’s carved wooden staircase is the natural place for a first look. Nick waited at the foot of it, beside a grandfather clock, while Cara came down the stairs towards him. Wood, carpet and a staircase that turns give a film depth that a plain room cannot.

A bride coming down the carved wooden staircase at the Harvard Club of Boston towards her groom, who waits beside a grandfather clock

Commonwealth Avenue

Step outside and you are on one of the most handsome streets in Boston. Nick and Cara walked the pavement under the bare trees in the late light, stood at the club’s front door, and stopped by an iron fence along the street as it got dark. The Public Garden is about a mile away if you want more, but the avenue on its own gives you plenty.

In the colder months the light goes early: in December the sun sets in Boston as early as 4:11 pm. Our sunset table gives the time for every month, so you can put your outdoor portraits before the ceremony if the day is short.

Speeches and sound

The speeches at Nick and Cara’s wedding were given on a handheld microphone in the hall, which is the easiest arrangement to record cleanly. If your band or DJ is providing the microphone, it is worth confirming that every speech will be on it.

Drones and game days

The club sits in Logan’s airspace, where a drone can be approved automatically up to 150 feet. It is also less than half a nautical mile from Fenway Park, the closest of any venue we have checked, so on a Red Sox home day no drone may fly there at all. We looked up the airspace at 20 venues we have filmed, this one included.

Planning notes for a Harvard Club of Boston wedding

Use both rooms. The bright ceremony room and the dark, warm hall look like two different films. Let the move between them be a moment.
Do your first look on the stairs. It is the best-composed spot in the building, and it works in any weather.
Plan the light outside. In winter the light goes early, so plan Commonwealth Avenue portraits around the sunset time for your date.
Make an entrance. The doors into the hall are made for it. Tell us when you will come through them.
Ask which clubhouse. The club has a second clubhouse downtown at One Federal Street; this guide is about the Back Bay one.

The Harvard Club of Boston is one of the venues in our guide to the best wedding venues in Boston. You can watch more of our Boston weddings in the gallery, see what each collection includes, or tell us about your day.