Luna Park St Kilda Wedding Photo Locations

Best Wedding Photo Location Melbourne Luna Park, St Kilda

If you are interested in taking wedding photos at Luna Park, please email [email protected] with your request at least 2 weeks before the date and the Park will get back to you with our guidelines and application form.

Luna Park may be one of Melbourne’s most iconic locales, but few people realise it’s also one of the city’s most magical wedding venues.

St Kilda’s Luna Park is one of the most iconic locations on the bay. Located on the foreshore it opened on 13 December 1912 and has been operating ever since. The first of four Luna Parks built in Australia, the St Kilda amusement park is one of only two that remain today.

Luna Park was developed by American showman J D Williams, with the Phillips brothers, who had ample experience in the amusement industry prior to relocating to Australia. The chief engineer was T H Eslick, an Englishman who had also worked on parks worldwide. In 1913 Williams returned to America to found Warner Brothers Studios, while the Phillips brothers stayed in Melbourne to manage Luna Park until their deaths in the 1950s.

Luna Park was at its height in the years before WW1. It was a roaring success and, with attractions such as the Scenic Railway, River Caves, Penny Arcade and the American Bowl Slide, the park drew people from far and wide.

Today Luna Park is operating with as much energy as ever, with people coming from all over the state to visit the laughing Mr Moon face and to travel on the Great Scenic Railway. The entrance to Luna Park is a great backdrop for wedding photography. If you’re after something a little quirky, but still retaining that great Australian ambience, Luna Park is definitely worth considering for your wedding day location photography.

Located by the beach in trendy St Kilda, the 107-year-old heritage fun park is better known for its wooden roller coaster (one of the oldest, still operating wooden roller coasters on the world which wraps around the entire Park), its stunning Luna Park Carousel (one of the last remaining in the world) and, of course, Mr Moon, the unmistakable 16-metre high smiling face whose giant mouth thrill-seekers enter the Park through.

However, located at the top of a hidden set of stairs set at the back of the Park lies a doorway to one of Melbourne’s most lovely, most romantic and, certainly, most breathtaking spots to get married.

Like the rest of Luna Park, the heritage listed function room turned 107 years old December 2019–and the architecture simply cannot be matched. From the tall ceilings and exposed wooden beams to the stunning giant, circle top windows that overlook Port Phillip Bay, you can feel the room is dripping in history.

It can seat 250 people for an elegant sit-down meal or up to 400 for a cocktail wedding, and your guests can dance the night away on a huge, polished wood floor that was once a dodgem car track and they can order drinks at a bar that has served tens of thousands of Melburnians from early last century, through two wars and even a Depression.

But, just because the room is oozing with history and lovely historical details doesn’t mean it’s old fashioned or Old World, for that matter. The spacious room is surprisingly versatile and, because the Park has a century worth of props and gear to call upon, its experienced events staff can easily transform it from elegant and stately to modern, colourful and, well, utterly cool.

“If there was one word I’d use to describe Luna Park as a wedding venue, it would have to be magical, absolutely magical,” says Sam Henry, Luna Park’s events co-ordinator.

“I can’t even describe how heartbreakingly beautiful this place is especially at twilight with the twinkling carnival lights of the Park in the background and the sun setting over the Bay, all wrapped in the sound of fun and laughter and joy in the fair ground below.

“And to watch a couple make a promise of a lifetime surrounded by all this magic? Well, it’s something you and your guests won’t ever be able to forget and that’s what a wedding day is about: magic, joy and memories.”

Henry, who has worked in hospitality and events for more than a decade and now teaches the next generation of Events Co-ordinators, says that Luna Park is also one of the most unique places to have your wedding photos taken.

“There is just nowhere else in Melbourne with Luna Park’s atmosphere and there certainly isn’t anywhere else you’ll get pictures like these.

“Wedding photographers, in particular, love it because they have a chance to capture the bride and groom in a really fun light – and their photos certainly aren’t the usual ones where a couple trots off and stands in front of things,” he says.

“I love seeing the look on a newlywed couple’s faces as they clamber onto the Ferris wheel or roller coaster. You simply can’t take a bad photo here. And, of course, the look on their faces when they pull up in front of Mr Moon’s giant mouth, well, it’s priceless.”

The best bit is that, depending on which of the Park’s many wedding packages a couple chooses, their guests can have the run of the park and enjoy the rides while they’re off having their photos taken and, says Sam, ” it’s like letting  group of kids loose in a chocolate shop.”

Henry adds that one of the other advantages of holding a wedding (or any event) at Luna Park is that it is so versatile.

It suits couples who are after elegant affairs just as well as fun couples who want to be creative on their big days and want to treat themselves – and their guests – to something truly different and one-off.

“We’ve organised weddings with circus themes, vintage themes and barn-style themes, as well as more laid-back weddings, but we’ve also held very traditional sit-down weddings where there are lots of wonderfully coiffed people decked out in tuxedos and ballgowns,” adds Sam.

There is no set menu as every event is tailored to the couple and the choices vary from grazing platters and antipasto towers at a cocktail wedding to cheese stations and candy bars, as well as buffets and whole roast lambs and even suckling pigs.

“We really are only limited by the couple’s imaginations but even if they aren’t creative, we’re a pretty imaginative bunch. Just tell us how you see your wedding running and we’ll make it happen and ensure your wedding day truly is one of the best and most magical days of your life.”