Alicia Flannigan and Patrick Thompson pose with his grandmother, Elizabeth Thompson, in the State House rotunda for photographer James Anthony.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

PROVIDENCE — In every bride’s fantasy are a few must-haves: the billowy dress, the bubbly champagne and the stacks of photos to remember it all.

For Rhode Island’s brides, that list might also include a dose of white marble and an outsized dome.

It’s one of the Ocean State’s more unusual trends. The State House, with its sweeping staircases and impressive rotunda, has emerged as a popular spot to have formal wedding photos taken.

Each year, dozens of satin-clad brides and tuxedoed grooms descend on the famed McKim, Mead and White-designed giant that sits atop Smith Hill, squeezing in photo shoots between their ceremony and reception.

Officially, the state doesn’t allow couples to marry or hold receptions at the Capitol, but it has embraced the photo concept.

The site has become such a desired locale that the state Facilities Department now books the space more than a year in advance, jamming in up to three couples a weekend in the peak wedding months of summer and fall.

With a standard $350 per-wedding usage fee, the practice has become an unexpected source of revenue for a cash-strapped state.

Patrick Thompson and Alicia Flannigan selected the Capitol building for their Oct. 3 wedding pictures because it offered the kind of bold architectural backdrop they’d been looking for.

Melissa de Melo and Peter Sousa, who got married the same day, were looking for an indoor photo site in case it rained.

Each evening on her way home from her job at AAA, de Melo would drive by the State House and admire the imposing structure. When a colleague suggested she have her photos taken there, de Melo booked it immediately.

It was prophetic thinking.

The morning of their wedding dawned rainy and bleak, with showers only worsening as the day wore on.

But as the couple glided up to the State House in their rented Rolls Royce, minutes after Flannigan and Thompson had left, they seemed to not even notice the inclement weather.

Fresh off their afternoon wedding Mass and en route to their reception at the Venus de Milo, in Swansea, they posed together inside the building as so many couples before them have, cozying up beside the columns and atop the balconies as de Melo chided her new husband to “smile with teeth!”

“Pictures are the most important thing because that’s the memory you have in 20 years,” she said. “I might forget details of what went on and I can just look back at the pictures and know what happened.”

In the past 12 months, the state has taken in $12,000 in State House photo fees, partly as the result of having raised the price, from $150, to $350 per couple, according to Marco Schiappa, the state’s director of facilities management. It has also collected an additional $22,000 in fees for other private events, including speaking programs and ceremonies.

The money is mostly used to cover insurance costs — officials purchase a one-day rider for each couple that uses the space, which is technically closed on weekends — and other administrative costs, Schiappa said.

And while the official policy bans weddings receptions on State House grounds, as with most anything in Rhode Island, it depends on who you know. Several state employees have had their nuptial events on the property in recent years, including an employee of Speaker William J. Murphy who had her gala party in a tent outside.

Schiappa calls that event “a misunderstanding.” A State House employee gave the woman the go-ahead to use the lawn without first consulting the Facilities Department. By the time Schiappa’s office was notified, it was just a few weeks before the wedding and the state decided not to make her cancel, he said.

For those who don’t have the connections needed for a private reception or can’t afford the price tag for the rotunda shoots, the hulking outdoor marble patios are always open to the public, no reservations and no fees required.

Schiappa says the state doesn’t track how many couples use the exterior spaces. As a native of Laos, who became a new American citizen, Pin Minevong and his bride-to-be, Charat, chose the State House lawn for their October photos for the building in the background. Rhode Island’s Capitol, Minevong said, represents American democracy, a powerful image to him.

But Boston-based photographer Adriano Batti, a native of Italy, said it was the inside of the building that makes it such a desirable location for a photo shoot.

“It’s a fabulous spot — the ceiling, the colors, the natural lighting. It kind of reminds me a little of Italy, with the columns and that staircase,” he said. “I’ve shot many weddings in Italy, and this has that same architectural beauty.”

Inside the rotunda on that rainy Saturday, Melissa de Melo was giddy with excitement as the camera shutter clicked away, capturing those details.

Her mom, Liduina, looked on, her eyes teary.

“All this marble,” she said, gesturing around her, “It’s what she really wanted.”

cneedham@projo.com