The Age of Adaline | St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church — the wedding that was supposed to be the whole life

Before the crash, before the lightning, before the century of false names, Adaline gets married. The film gives the wedding barely any screen time and it does not need more: a young woman in a 1920s gown under stone arches, believing the ordinary future is coming.

The church is St. Andrew's-Wesley United, at Burrard and Nelson, completed in 1933 to a design by Twizell and Twizell. It is late Gothic Revival done in grey stone, with a steep gabled roof, a rose window over the Nelson Street front, and an interior of tall pointed arches that pull your eyes up before you have decided to look. The stained glass is worth slowing down for, especially the deep blues on a bright morning. The congregation still runs a jazz vespers service on Sunday evenings, which fills the nave with a sound the architects never planned for and the room handles beautifully.

It is an active church in the middle of the West End, not a set. Services are open, and outside service hours the sanctuary is usually accessible to anyone who walks in quietly.

Sit near the back on the left, where the light from the west windows lands on the stone floor in the late afternoon. That is roughly the angle the camera takes, and it is the last frame in the film where Adaline gets to be an ordinary woman with an ordinary number of years ahead.

Location photo via Wikimedia Commons.