Wedding Photographers & Videographers at Saint Benedict Church (Johnstown), Johnstown

Saint Benedict Church sits on Bedford Street in Johnstown, and a wedding there feels like a wedding in a busy, close-knit parish. Your guests arrive at a campus with a church, a parish hall, the Saint John Paul II Building and an outdoor fountain, so there is more than one spot outside for wedding photos before or after the ceremony. Ask your photographer and videographer to look at the church entrance and the fountain when you visit; both make an easy setting for a group picture.

Your wedding ceremony takes place in the church itself, which the parish built after it took down its first small wooden church. There is also a Vocations Chapel at the back of the church. The parish's website does not describe the inside of the church in detail, so walk it before your wedding day and talk through where you will stand, how the light falls and where a wedding videographer can set up without blocking guests' view of the aisle.

This is an active Catholic parish with Masses every weekend, a deacon and many volunteer ministries, and the parish livestreams on its own YouTube channel. It does not publish a wedding page, so the first step is a call to the parish office. Other parishes in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown ask couples to begin about nine months ahead under the diocesan marriage policy, so call well before you plan anything else.

• Call the parish office before setting your date.
• Ask whether the parish hall can be booked and what the church allows on the grounds.
• Ask about photo and video guidelines for the ceremony.

A little about Saint Benedict Church

The parish began in 1911 as a mission for sixteen Catholic families in Geistown, with a small wooden church in the cemetery. It became its own parish in 1930, the church was moved to its present site, and in 1962 the wooden church was taken down to make way for the church that stands today.