Getting married in Vancouver, by the Gastown steam clock

Picture the end of your ceremony on Water Street. Your guests step out onto the cobblestones, and a block away the steam clock whistles the quarter hour. Nobody planned it, and everybody remembers it.

Gastown suits a city wedding. It is small enough to walk from the ceremony to dinner, old enough to feel like somewhere, and right next to downtown, the harbour and the train. Here is how to plan a wedding there, with the story of the clock told where it helps.

Where to get married in and around Gastown

Gastown is a handful of streets, so most of what you need is a short walk from the clock, at the corner of Water and Cambie. A few places to start from, all real and all within walking distance:

• Steamworks Brew Pub, on Water Street, a minute from the clock. It has private rooms for dinners and receptions, some with a view of the harbour.
• The Permanent, on West Pender, a few minutes up the hill. It is a 1907 bank building restored as an event space, with a stained glass ceiling and the old vault door.
• The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, in Chinatown, about a fifteen-minute walk. The garden rents its pavilions and courtyards for ceremonies, and its lanterns suit an evening wedding.

Ask each venue for its current capacity and prices; they change, and we only list what we checked.

For a small wedding, you do not need a venue at all. In British Columbia, a civil ceremony is performed by a marriage commissioner, a private citizen licensed by the province. You find one through the province’s online search and book them yourself, and they come to you: a room, a restaurant, a park. You need a marriage licence bought in the three months before the wedding, and two witnesses aged 19 or over.

These streets almost did not survive. In the late 1960s, a freeway was planned through the area, and Gastown’s old warehouses were run down. Residents fought the freeway and won, and in 1971 the province protected Gastown as a historic area. Through the 1970s, the warehouses became shops and restaurants, and in 2009 the district became a national historic site. The steam clock came at the end of that revival, in 1977, as its finishing touch.

Photos at the steam clock

The clock is the most photographed corner in Gastown, so you will not have it to yourselves at noon. Go early in the morning, before the shops open, when the street is quiet and the light comes in low along Water Street. Or go at dusk, when the street lamps come on and the steam glows under them.

Use the chimes as your cue. The whistles play the Westminster Quarters every fifteen minutes, and the clock lets off a puff of steam on the hour. Tell your photographer the time of the next quarter, and kiss when it plays.

Rain is part of it. Wet cobblestones shine, the steam stands out against a grey sky, and clear umbrellas photograph well. Bring flat shoes for the cobblestones and keep the heels for indoors.

Why is there a steam clock at all? Downtown Vancouver is heated by steam, sent through pipes under the streets, and in the 1970s some of it escaped through vents in the sidewalk. The city wanted to hide one of them, at Water and Cambie, and asked horologist Raymond Saunders for a clock. He built it to be fun, and it was finished in 1977. A story often told is that it also kept people from sleeping on the warm grate; the sources disagree on that one.

How it works is half steam, half not. A small steam engine in the base was built to lift steel balls that drive the clock, like the weights of a grandfather clock. It was noisy and kept poor time, so since the 1980s an electric motor has done most of that work. The steam still blows the whistles and the plume on top. In 2014 the clock was taken away for repairs, with Saunders working on it again, and it came back to its corner in early 2015.

Planning around the season

Vancouver is mild, and wet. The rainiest months run from November to January, and the driest are July and August. Summer gives you long evenings and the best chance of a dry day; it is also when Gastown is busiest and venues book first.

Fall is the season of our scene, and a good one. The maples turn red and gold in October, the light is soft, and the crowds thin out after the summer. Plan for rain all the same: a venue with an indoor fallback, umbrellas at the door, and a line in your invitation about the cobblestones.

Winter weddings are calm and cosy, and much cheaper to book. Just let your guests know it will probably rain rather than snow.

Guests who travel

Gastown is easy to reach. The Canada Line runs from the airport to Waterfront Station, at the edge of Gastown, and the clock is a few minutes’ walk from there. The SeaBus to North Vancouver and the West Coast Express trains leave from the same station.

For hotels, look near Canada Place, by the water: the Fairmont Waterfront and the Pan Pacific are both a short walk from the clock. Gastown also has smaller boutique hotels, and downtown has many more within a twenty-minute walk.

Vancouver weddings often gather families who read different languages. Your save the date can play in each of them, with one link per language; we explain how in one save the date, in up to 30 languages.

How it ended up in our save the date

When we painted our Vancouver save the date, we wanted the clock to be the first thing your guests touch. It opens on a carpet of red maple leaves, with a stamp drawn like the face of the steam clock in the middle. Your guest taps it, the clock strikes two, and a burst of its steam blows the leaves away.

Behind them is the corner at night. The lamp switches on, the clock ticks and steams, and a bride and groom lean towards each other under a maple. As they kiss, your names, date and place appear above them. There is one more thing to find once the date is on screen; we will let your guests discover it.

You can play the Vancouver scene today on the templates page, with a sample couple. It is not yet one of the scenes you can choose when you create your own save the date; we are finishing it, and we will say so here the day it is. To see it next to Toronto, read Toronto and Vancouver, two new save the dates, and to pick the right moment to send it, when to send your save the dates.

Sources

• Steam clock, Wikipedia, for the clock’s builder, mechanism, chimes and 2014 repairs.
• The Tyee, April 2023, on the steam clock and civic historian John Atkin, for why the clock was built and its place in Gastown’s revival.
• Visiting the steam clock in Gastown, BC Magazine, for the weights, the motor and the Westminster Quarters.
• Gastown Historic District, Canada’s Historic Places, for the 1971 and 2009 designations.
• Top 10 Watch List 2015: Gastown, Heritage Vancouver, for the freeway and the revival.
• Marriage commissioners and Getting married, Government of British Columbia, for civil ceremonies.