Yuki and Nicolas got married in the Ladies’ Pavilion in May. We planned their wedding in around two months. They are local New Yorkers, although Nicolas is French and Yuki is Japanese. Since becoming a couple, they have visited each other’s native countries together. “That helped us to gain more insight and understanding for each other’s cultural background,” said Nicolas.
They had been in the same circle of friends about ten years previously, “but we never got to really know each other then and many people moved away,” explained Nicolas. And in the fall of 2015, they were reintroduced to each other at a dinner by a mutual friend who was visiting the city. “And this time, finally, we got to know each other and discovered that we were meant for each other,” he said. They had been a couple for a little over a year when they got married.
Their party was around twenty-five guests. Unfortunately their mothers were not able to make the journey from their home countries for the wedding, but they have lots of friends in the city. One of their friends read a poem at the ceremony, and Yuki and Nicolas wrote their vows to say to each other.
I asked them why getting married was important to them. “We share the same dream of having a family of our own one day. We love each other and cannot imagine being without each other and we wanted to have our special union also validated in the eyes of God and law as well as our family and friends,” explained Nicolas. “We can talk about anything, feels like closest friends, have lots of fun and also work as a good team,” he added.
Yuki and Nicolas didn’t want to leave their guests waiting around while they took photographs around Central Park, but they also didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to have a set of lovely posed pictures in such a beautiful place. So, they broke with tradition and decided to see each other before the wedding ceremony. They met with their photographer, Jakub Redziniak, forty-five minutes before their ceremony start time, and took some photos then.
Because the couple had already seen each other before the wedding ceremony, they were able to walk to their wedding together, rather than have the groom and guests wait for the bride to arrive. One of the many benefits of choosing to get married in a public park is that it’s very easy to get rid of lots of traditions that don’t suit you!
After the ceremony they took more photos with the group, and they were able to go off straight away after that for lunch at Lincoln Center. They walked together as a group from the Ladies’ Pavilion, through Strawberry Fields, past Sheep Meadow and out of Central Park from 64th Street.
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