Chloe & Matt | New York Public Library Elopement

Chloe and Matt had been planning their NYC elopement from Australia for a hella long time. “Heaps” as they say in Australia.

As you may know, Australians take these epic month-long vacations, and often throw a “wedding” into the mix 😂

Chloe and Matt invited their parents and three sets of best friends to come along for the adventure. We spent a year working with this dynamic duo and smoothing out all the details.

317 days of planning to be exact.

And what we crafted for them was an amazing day, set to start at 1:00 p.m. sharp:

• Our first stop would take us to Jane’s Carousel in DUMBO.
• Next, we would hop into a vintage taxi and zip up to Grand Central Terminal and the Campbell apartment for some old-school glam NYC shots.
• Then off to Central Park.
• And why not visit the Top of the Rock???

You name it, Chloe and Matt were going to do it, and EIF (having planned everything to a “T”) was going to capture every amazing moment of this amazing day!

But September turned out to be the wettest month isn NYC on record in over 100 years . . .

And nothing could have prepared us for the actual day of this couple’s WEDDING.

The day started off . . . well, wet . . . and yeah, we expected that, but by 11:00 a.m. we realized that we had a major situation on our hands.

There is even a Wikipedia entry about the day . . . Central Park was inundated with its 6th-highest rainfall in more than 141 years, just to give you an idea. Between NYC’s two busiest airports, LaGuardia and JFK, more than 500 flights were cancelled and more than 800 were delayed. The mayor urged NY’ers to not leave their homes AT ALL.

But . . . by 9:00 a.m. Chloe had already started her hair and makeup with plans to meet me and the videographer for the start of our photo shoot at 1:00 p.m.

I hopped on WhatsApp to start coordinating with her fiancé, Matt.

It was important to them to get married ON THAT DAY . . . come Hell or high water . . . literally.

After a year of planning our magnificent timescape, with visits to all these epic NYC locations and backdrops, we didn’t want to just throw in the towel and get married in their hotel room.

I looked at the radar, the rain was gonna settle down later in the day (still wet, but not monsoon). We needed a covered area, so we started thinking of options that would still give us some NYC classic glam.

The NYPL has a covered vestibule. Really, it’s an awe-inspiring outdoor space that is public and accessible even when the library is closed.

Chloe and Matt loved the idea.

We decided to push the amazing photo shoot we had planned to the next day, but keep the ceremony on its scheduled day.

We called the restaurant and they said they would stay open for us. That’s the thing about NY’ers. We will be out there working if we can 😂 During blackouts, floods, you name it, we pull it together get to work 🤘

Chloe and Matt’s officiant and I were worried about whether or not the subways would be running, so we gave ourselves triple the amount of time to get up to the NYPL. (Did I mention I live in Brooklyn?) We ended up arriving so early that we had time to have a cocktail at the Andaz Hotel and catch up.

Chloe and Matt and their friends and family arrived at the NYPL and as promised, as they had hoped, they had their ceremony (and it was lovely).

There had been so much excitement and drama that day—from biblical rain to the Big Apple being stopped in its tracks to rethinking the carefully orchestrated day we had originally planned—but when it was time for the wedding for this precious couple, all of that melted away and all the emotions flowed freely. Joy, relief, happiness that they made it through their cray-cray day with more composure and grace than anyone could wish for!

After the ceremony, I joined them at the restaurant for a round and then headed home to dry off.

We met up again the next day, which was a BEAUTIFUL late-September day in NYC. We did everything we had planned for so long, checked everything off our list. We explored all around Central Park and DUMBO and truly had an awesome photo shoot.

Chloe and Matt were impeccably awesome throughout the entire experience. Awesome for trusting in us, awesome for trusting in the day even as it was completely rewired and reimagined. 

They ended up with the magical wedding day of their dreams, AND an outrageous (as in: never before in recorded history) story to take home to Australia!

I interviewed them afterward to ask what they enjoyed about the day, about NYC, about eloping . . . and here’s they said:

“Well, we loved not having to think about anything. If there was a problem, we knew Jenny would take care of it.”