Old Quebec Elopement Guide

I know Old Quebec in the way that comes from having photographed the same streets at different hours across different seasons. The city looks completely different at six in the morning than it does at noon. The stone holds different light. The crowds are absent. The character is quieter and more intimate. The Old Quebec that elopement couples get, when we move before the tour buses, is not the same city that most visitors see.

The Breakneck Stairs and Cliff Alleys

The escalier Casse-Cou, the Breakneck Stairs, is the oldest staircase in North America and connects the Upper Town to the Lower Town at the rue du Petit-Champlain. I photograph couples on the stairs themselves and in the alleys that run parallel to the cliff face behind the Lower Town buildings. These alley spaces are narrow, stone-walled, and almost always empty early in the morning. The staircase gives a sense of the vertical scale of the city, the cliff dropping from the Chateau level to the river level, that the flat streets of the Upper Town cannot provide.

Rue du Trésor and the Cathedral Quarter

Rue du Trésor is a short alley off the rue Buade in the Upper Town, known for the artists’ stalls that line it during the day. In the morning before the artists arrive, the alley is a narrow stone corridor with the cathedral towers visible above the end and the rue Buade archway at the entrance. I have used this alley as a ceremony location for couples who want a genuinely enclosed, intimate space within the city. The Notre-Dame de Quebec Basilica on the rue Buade gives a formal stone facade with the kind of architectural scale that Quebec City does better than any other Canadian city.

Governors Garden and the Walls Interior

The Governors Garden inside the fortification walls, directly behind the Chateau Frontenac, is one of the best-kept secrets for ceremony space in Old Quebec. The garden is formal, bounded by the rear facade of the Chateau on one side and the stone fortification wall on the other, and in the morning before it opens to the public it is completely private. I have photographed multiple ceremonies here and the combination of the Chateau facade, the garden, and the wall creates a backdrop that is distinctly Quebec and entirely unique to this location.