A city wedding at The Shelbourne

There is a moment in every Shelbourne wedding when the city joins in. A stranger on Stephens Green shouts congratulations, or a bus rumbles past the windows during the toasts, or the doorman tips his hat as you arrive and a pair of tourists burst into applause. Country house weddings are sealed away from the world. A Shelbourne wedding happens right in the middle of it, and that is exactly its magic.

The hotel has stood on St Stephen's Green since 1824 and wears two centuries of stories easily. The Irish Constitution was drafted in one of its rooms in 1922, and the guest book down the years reads like a century of headlines. Your wedding joins a very long queue of history, which is a lovely thing to feel in the footage.

The city is a character in every Shelbourne film, and it never misses a cue.

Filming in a grand hotel

The Shelbourne gives us tall sash windows, high ceilings and that wonderful old hotel glow once the lamps come on. Morning preparation in a suite overlooking Stephens Green is some of the easiest footage in Dublin, with proper daylight and a view that handles the establishing shots for us. Later, the ballroom by candlelight needs almost nothing from us except attention.

Two honest notes. Drone filming is restricted over the city centre, so the sweeping aerials that suit a castle stay on the shelf here, and the film leans on streetscape, detail and faces instead. And a working hotel has other guests, so the quiet corners matter. We scout them early, travel light and keep our footprint small. We have had plenty of practice at being invisible in a lobby.

The Green

Fifteen minutes across the road is worth an hour almost anywhere else. Dubliners are generous to wedding couples, and Stephens Green gives you the bandstand, the bridges, old trees and that lovely collision of an ordinary Tuesday with the best day of your life. In December you can add Grafton Street under Christmas lights, which is a closing scene we would happily pay to film.

If you are getting married here

• Let the lobby happen. Your walk through the front doors in full dress is a scene in itself. Resist any urge to slip in a side entrance.
• Ask for rooms facing Stephens Green. The light is better for preparation footage and the view earns its place in the film.
• Think about winter. The hotel at Christmas is its own argument. Lights, livery and dusk at four o'clock, which for a film crew is a gift.

City weddings have their own pace and we love them dearly. If The Shelbourne is yours, we should talk.