Bethesda Fountain Elopement in NYC's Central Park

James and Wanda's NYC Central Park Elopement in Bethesda Terrace | Intimate Weddings During Quarantine | Downsizing a Wedding in New York City | Apollo Fields Photography

I remember not-so-long-ago when we were in the thick of the Stay At Home quarantine wondering to myself, ‘Will weddings EVER go back to normal?’

It was just so hard to imagine a big group of people flying in from all over the world to celebrate marriage again. Between the hugging, tight cocktail hours, packed dance floors-- it all seemed like a dream we could only hope to relive. In some ways, it still does. I don’t know when we will have hundreds of guests jam packed on a dance floor again… nobody does. We can only predict, schedule, hold our breath, and hope.

This 4th of July weekend restored a huge chunk of that last ingredient for me: HOPE. And oh man, did it fuel my creative soul and heal a lot of the mourning that I have been experiencing as couple-after-couple have had to (understandably) reschedule their original plans.

It was my first weekend back in the saddle (the wedding saddle that is-- I’ve been in the literal saddle this whole time) and it was a double header to boot. Two mornings in a row, I got to experience couples turning lemons into lemonade and reimagining their weddings in the best ways possible. Both couples have had to postpone their big celebrations to 2021, but wanted to still honor their love and commitment to one another by legally wedding in a more intimate setting.

Wanda and James were slated for a big destination wedding in Banff this year on July 5th, but everything was obviously derailed with COVID19. This date is especially important to them, because it is exactly three years from the day they met, so in order to still celebrate this day and their marriage, they planned an elopement in the heart of the city they live in.

Central Park— and especially Bethesda Fountain— is typically a tourist hotspot as well as local refuge in the thick of NYC summers. However, on this Sunday morning, it was comparatively empty, with a light breeze cutting through the thick of the city humidity. It is easy to imagine this having a post-apocalyptic feeling, but that truly wasn’t the case. It felt private, sort of serene, like this iconic nucleus of New York suddenly belonged to only us. I remember saying to them before I left, “This is the million dollar wedding venue”. It really was. I don’t think a million dollars would actually buy out this location if somebody tried.

It sounds cheesy but this elopement really did restore so much hope for me. I got to witness two families coming together to watch Wanda and James exchange vows. I got to spend the morning with this fun and badass couple. I got to see Wanda shed a tear, which I was assured wasn’t easy to do! Nothing felt risky or contaminated, which was a very real concern not-so-long-ago (and still lingers in the present and future). We were all there for the exact right reasons, and this made me believe that weddings WILL go back, and in some respects might be better than before!