Photo Permit Drama

Since getting engaged there was one choice that we never had to think twice about and that was the location for our photos. We live near High Park and spend a lot of time there so it just made sense to pick that area. Conveniently, our photographer also lives right near High Park and is quite familiar with it so it seemed like it was meant to be.

Turns out I was wrong about that because it’s actually illegal to have formal photos done in High Park. And no, this isn’t a new thing. The woman I talked to at the permit office said that the photo ban came into effect about five years ago and all those wedding parties I see having photos done in High Park, well, they are there illegally.

I then asked the obvious question of “Is there a list online of city parks where we can take photos” and got the not-so-surprising answer of “No”. The woman said that that the next closest thing to High Park was Sunnyside Park and I was actually OK with that. But then when I tried to book it I found out that since I was interested in booking space after 4 pm, I would have to call the Grenadier Café (which, for those of you who don’t know Toronto, is located in High Park).

Fine, I called the number I was given and got Sunnyside Pavillion’ s info line that mentioned nothing about photos. Awesome. So then I looked up the Café’s number called that and was given another number, called that multiple times, kept getting a voicemail, and finally left a message.

That woman called me back from the Sunnyside Pavilion number (I know, I’m confused too) while I was at the dentist and left me a message saying to call her back and leave the date and time I was interested in. So I did that.

Then this morning she called while I was in a meeting and left another message, this time telling me that Sunnyside Pavilion is booked for the whole day for a private event.

Right now I am more frustrated by this whole process then upset because I don’t actually want pictures taken at the Pavilion, I want to talk them down by the lake and I can’t manage that there’s some event going on that’s taking over all of Sunnyside Park. And surely you’re allowed to take formal pictures down by the lake, right? (Then again, the city does doesn’t allow that in its largest park.)

So I’m going to make another call to the City and see if it’s possible to get a permit for the actual park, not the Pavilion.

I’ll let you know how that goes in a future post and I’ll also share some info I learned about city photo permits.