The offbeat bride: Nicole, Landscape Architect

Her offbeat partner: Stew, Photographer & Designer

Location & date of wedding: Hernshead Pavilion Central Park, NYC - July 13th, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: We found out about Hernshead Pavilion, a Victorian pavilion by one of the lakes in Central Park. It cost us only $25 for a two hour permit. Since we don’t share in a fear of the number 13 (it’s one of my personal favorite numbers) we were able to get the time we wanted despite our short planning period! Hooray!


No one else was even getting married there that day, though the weekends before and after, and the day before were all filled up!

We had everyone assemble at the park, while I hid behind a big rock, and we did our short ceremony with vows written by ourselves and a reading from Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet”. We wanted a small intimate wedding, with great food and a reasonable cost - and we didn’t want to have to do a ton of work.

I had been married previously, and did not want to wear white. I felt it didn’t really express me very well. Furthermore, I didn’t want a veil and I have long dreadlocks but didn’t want them down. We are in NYC, and preliminary explorations of places to wed were outrageously expensive. Oh, and we got engaged in February, and wanted to get married that summer. In NYC this is considered a virtual impossibility.

After lunch, we all (20 of us total) got back on the bus to go to my Mom’s house on the Upper West Side. Our dear friend, who is a pastry chef made a dairy-free wedding cake, (I am allergic) for us that was stunning and delicious. Our friend’s children joined us for the cake portion of the afternoon. We had the ceremony at noon, and by 6 pm we were in the car and off to our B&B for our honeymoon.

Our biggest challenge: I ended up hitting a ton of stores and doing a ton of searching online. Eventually I remembered that I always liked Nicole Miller clothes and went to their website. I saw the dress and thought, “Not what I was orginally looking for, but nice!” I went to the store and tried it on and was entranced instantly — and it was just under budget!

At first, I have to say, there was some family resistance to it because it was patterned and bold — but once they saw it on me, with my hair up, and it’s silk rippling in the breeze, they were convinced!

My favorite moment: Maybe it’s cliché, but gazing into my husbands eyes as we put each others rings on.

My offbeat advice: Stick to your guns even when others doubt you. They’ll realize in the end that your wedding was perfect for YOU, even if they didn’t think it was “correct.”

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn: Click the photo below to see lots of great shots from Nicole & Stew’s elegant Central Park wedding!