Here at Wed in Central Park we love a big wedding, but we love a small wedding just as much! Some of our couples have quite a big group of guests, and by our standards “big” is around 80-100 people. Usually, our couples have maybe 10-20 friends and family members with them if they have guests. I think that’s partly because a lot of our couples are visiting New York from far away, so they need to keep the guest list short. Partly I think it’s because if someone wants to have a bigger wedding with lots of people, they tend to be thinking of a longer, more formal affair, so they won’t choose to get married in a public park.
We’re no strangers to managing guests and where they need to be and when, but we have married lots and lots of eloping couples in recent years. And an elopement wedding does feel different from a wedding with guests and witnesses to the ceremony. Sometimes I’m contacted by a couple who say they’re eloping but then they talk about a small number of guests they will have with them – maybe just their parents and/or immediate family. I understand why to many people this feels like an elopement, because it is such a pared down event compared to a traditional wedding, but this is not what I mean when I talk about an elopement. When I say that someone eloped, I mean that it’s just the couple and nobody else (maybe their kids!). Maybe they have our photographer, our videographer, a musician and of course an officiant (and occasionally – even myself!) but what they are choosing to do by eloping is to begin their marriage focusing just on their partner.
I always ask our couples if they have any regrets about not having a traditional wedding closer to home and they always say no. Some of our eloping couples throw a party with their wider social circle of friends and family when they get home. This is the compromise that keeps everyone happy, or gives couples the best of both worlds, however you want to look at it. We find that couples who elope can treat the whole trip as the celebration of their marriage. Some couples go on to some other location afterwards for their official honeymoon, but most couples who elope to New York enjoy the sights of the city together and the trip counts as both wedding and honeymoon in one.
Many couples who contact me looking for a smaller, intimate wedding with just a few guests, or an elopement tell me that they are looking to reduce stress. For many of our clients, a big wedding comes with too much pressure and worry. Lots of people don’t want to stand in front of hundreds of their friends and acquaintances and declare their very personal love for one another. If it’s just the two of them, they are freer to say how they really feel to the person who is most important to them and the person they are making these big promises to.
So, here are a few testimonies from real couples who have eloped to get married in Central Park recently. Click the links to read a little more about each couple and to see their photos.
This Scottish couple had been together for several years and had kids together, so were already very much in a committed relationship. They had already planned the trip to New York, and our groom had let slip that he planned to make the trip memorable by proposing while they were in the city, our bride suggested going one better and just getting married while they were in town! “I think an elopement is a great option if you don’t want to spend too much money and put yourself under needless stress” she said. “I think they are definitely becoming more popular and appealing to people as the cost of a traditional wedding is only getting more and more expensive.”
This Irish couple had viewed a few hotels and wedding venues in Ireland that they had stayed in and liked over the years but nothing felt right. They had always liked the idea of eloping, “we are in our mid thirties and have kids, and a big ‘traditional Irish wedding’ did not appeal to either of us,” our bride said that keeping the costs down was definitely a factor, “but aside from that the main reason is that priorities are definitely different at our stage of life,” she told me.
This couple were living in Canada at the time when they got married, but are originally from Australia. It was the right time for them to get married, and New York was close, but their family far away. They acknowledged that they missed their family at their wedding, but they had the best day in New York. They had a vintage cab take them from their fancy hotel to Central Park, to the Rockefeller Cennter, to Grand Central, and on to Brooklyn – you just can’t do that with guests in tow!
For this British couple it was “New York or nowhere.” They had been together for 27 years when they got married and had two kids. They knew they would get married one day but it just wasn’t a priority when they both knew how committed they were to each other anyway. “For us getting married was really just a confirmation of our relationship,” our bride told me, but she did want to share the same surname as her husband and sons. They knew they wanted to get married abroad in a small ceremony, but they thought that getting married in New York would be far too complicated and too expensive, as I think lots of people expect it to be. “We were amazed to find out that it was so simple, in fact a lot easier than other destination weddings that we have been a part of or that friends have done,” she said.
This couple from Texas were in their late fifties when they eloped to New York to get married, and this was a second wedding for both of them. They knew straight away that eloping was for them. “It’s the perfect option for people getting married at our age who have already had the big wedding thing, and don’t want to put out elderly family members and other family with small children with having to travel to a wedding,” our bride said.
This couple eloped, although not very far, from their home in Upstate New York! “We wanted an outdoor wedding and were looking at other places in New York such as the Adirondack area, Lake Placid, Thousand Islands, etc. We decided not to go with them because they were out of our price range,” our bride said. As they were researching wedding ideas, they found that they were both reading how people noted that they wished that they had a smaller wedding and spent the money on a honeymoon or elsewhere instead. They both looked at each other when we saw some of the prices for venues, and said, “In this economy?” they were so surprised at the high prices for traditional wedding venues.
This British couple considered destination wedding locations. “Initially we considered getting married in Italy, but the idea of trying to organize a wedding and then potentially having to entertain guests who came just didn’t appeal,” she told me. They also considered some options in the UK, but in the end they concluded that they didn’t want a big formal wedding. They had considered eloping to New York as a possibility but they realised that meant excluding loved ones from the celebration. Then, one day they were at a family party and they realised that they could have the best of both worlds. They decided to elope for the intimate ceremony and then come home and celebrate with a party afterwards with their friends and family.
If you feel like you might share some of these feelings and an elopement might suit you and your partner, for whatever reason, then we can help you to do it in beautiful Central Park in the heart of New York – an amazing city to celebrate in. If you’re visitors to New York you can take a few days to enjoy exploring the city together – it truly has something for everyone. This way, the whole trip becomes a celebration of your love and commitment. An elopement is like a two-for-one deal of wedding and honeymoon!
If you would like me to help you with planning your own elopement in Central Park, whatever the reason, visit our website. Keep updated with our news and see lots of beautiful photos of vow renewals and weddings in Central Park, follow us on Instagram, follow us on Facebook, follow us on TikTok, and follow us on Pinterest.
