I’ve been planning weddings in Central Park for over ten years now, and a very frequently asked question from clients is the one about where a couple should go to eat after their wedding.  It is such a difficult one to answer because it all depends on your group size, what your budget is, what your tastes are, how much walking or travelling you want to do (do you want to be close to Central Park?  In Manhattan?  With a view of Manhattan from across the river?), and many other factors.  New York is a huge city with so many awesome places to choose from with every cuisine you ..read more

Samantha and Kevin eloped to New York from their home in the North West of England in September.  Samantha is 33 and from Warrington and Kevin is 45 and from Liverpool.  They got married at Wagner Cove, just the two of them.  “We had the most wonderful day in a beautiful patch of nature in the middle of one of the most amazing cities in the world,” Samantha told me. Like so many of our couples, Samantha and Kevin met online, but not on a dating app.  They met through Twitter.  They had been together for seven years, and engaged for almost four years before they got m ..read more

Anna and Peter eloped to New York, just the two of them, from their home in Manchester in England in September.  They got married at Wagner Cove.  Anna was 38 and Peter 39 when they got married.  They met online through the dating app Bumble four years before they got married.  Their fourth anniversary since they met was the week before they got married.  They got engaged on Anna’s birthday in February 2022.  Peter popped the question in Paris at the top of the Arc D’Triomphe.  “Although we’d talked about it, I’d convinced myself it wasn’t going to happen w ..read more

Over the years of planning hundreds of weddings in Central Park I have encountered lots of couples who are eloping to New York.  Sometimes couples already have a vacation to the city booked and the decide to get married on a whim.  For some; New York holds a special place in their hearts and they have visited many times before and dreamt of getting married here, and it’s not uncommon for couples who got engaged in Central Park want to get married there too!  And for some couples, this is their first visit to NYC and they will be making new memories together as they explore this ..read more

Valerie and Bastien got married in the Dene Summerhouse (otherwise known as the Treehouse for Dreaming) on a Saturday afternoon in July.  The couple had been together for three years when they got married, and had been living together in Germany.  They moved to New York right before they got married.  They first contacted me just two months before the wedding, as they were also arranging their move. The couple met in Frankfurt in Germany, not long after they had each moved there.  Despite having clicked immediately and exchanged numbers, Valerie’s old American phone numbe ..read more

Tayla and Hayden eloped from their home in the Midlands of England in early September.  They got married underneath Bethesda Terrace because it was an unseasonably hot day.  They had a permit for a wedding to take place anywhere within the whole Bethesda Terrace and Fountain area but they decided to choose the exact spot on the day. Tayla and Hayden had met at school when they were twelve years old.  They lost touch when Hayden moved away, and then reconnected three years ago through their parents and social media and quickly became a couple after that.  They were both th ..read more

So you think you can plan your wedding yourself?!  Well, of course you can, and many people do plan a destination wedding or elopement in Central Park all by themselves, without the help of a wedding planner like myself.  When it comes to planning a wedding far from home, social media and internet searches can be a huge help.  Lots of answers and photos of possible ceremony or reception locations can be found online, so you can do this all by yourself with the help of Google!  But I am about to make the argument in this blog post that it can take a huge amount of stress of ..read more

Allison and Sean got married at Wagner Cove in April.  Allison is from Louisiana originally and Sean is from Ireland.  They both live together in Manhattan now.  Allison was 34 and Sean 36 when they got married. They met while working for the same newspaper, the New York Daily News, when they were both in New York, but they weren’t dating then.  After Sean had left and moved back to Ireland, Allison visited and they began a long-distance relationship.  They were together (well, long-distance together!) for seven years before they got married.  Sean moved to New ..read more

Perline and Kwame got married in Cop Cot in July.  Technically, they are New Yorkers, They live in New Jersey now, but they are from Queens in New York City originally, and many of their family and friends still live there.  Perline was 30 and Kwame 32 when they got married. Perline and Kwame knew each other in high school, but their lives took different paths for some years after leaving school.  They had been a couple for around two years before they got married.  They knew pretty much straight away that they were meant for each other, though.  “Getting married has ..read more

Helen and Steve got married in early November in the Ladies’ Pavilion.  This is probably the best time of year to see both greenery and the start of the lovely Fall colors on the trees, and the temperatures are still not too low to get married outdoors comfortably.  Helen’s daughter and the couple’s two friends were their guests. Helen and Steve had met briefly around 1991 through mutual friends but at the time they weren’t at all interested in each other.  They met up again in 2018 after a chat on the phone because Steve bumped into an old mutual friend from years ago by chan ..read more