Chloe & Matt | New York Public Library Elopement
A valuable life lesson on what to do when epic rain decides to crash your wedding day.
Chloe and Matt live in Melbourne, Australia. If you didn’t know, Aussies love to take these epic month-long vacations, and often throw a “wedding” into the mix. My heroes!
These two decided to elope in NYC, bringing their parents and three sets of best friends along for the adventure. Our team spent nearly a year working with this dynamic duo (“heaps” as they say in Australia), smoothing out every last detail.
Chloe and Matt didn’t just want a simple day. Nope. They wanted everything. So, we spent 317 days crafting an unforgettable NYC adventure.
We had everything mapped out for 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, 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???
A perfect, iconic NYC elopement, right? But here’s where the plot thickens…
The Rain
September rolls around and it’s the wettest month NYC has seen in over a century.
And nothing could have prepared us for the actual day of Chloe and Matt’s WEDDING. Not kidding. There’s even a Wikipedia page about this day.
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.
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 was practically shouting from the rooftops to stay indoors, and it was complete chaos.
But Chloe and Matt…
No way were they canceling their wedding!
Rain or shine, they were determined. And the EIF team? Well, we’re New Yorkers. We’d been through worse. We weren’t going to let a little (ok, A LOT of) rain stop us.
The Morning of the Wedding
At 9:00 a.m. that morning, before we knew how CRAY it was all gonna be, Chloe began her hair and makeup, and we were still on track to meet our videographer at 1:00 p.m. for their photoshoot.
But by 10:00 a.m., it was pouring. I hopped on WhatsApp to start coordinating with her fiancé Matt. The question of the hour: “What do we do?!”
The answer? Improvise, baby!
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.
And it was important to them to get married ON THAT DAY… come Hell or high water… literally.
I looked at the radar and saw the rain was gonna settle down later in the day (still wet, but not a monsoon). We needed a covered area, so we started thinking of options that would still give us some NYC classic glam.
The New Plan
Suddenly, inspiration strikes. The New York Public Library! It’s an architectural gem with a covered vestibule, an awe-inspiring outdoor space that is accessible to the public even when the library is closed, and it just screams classic New York.
Chloe and Matt LOVED the idea.
But it wasn’t just about the ceremony. We had spent a year planning a full photoshoot with NYC’s most iconic backdrops.
So we decided: Ceremony today, photos tomorrow when the weather cleared.
As the day went on, restaurants were closing left and right due to the storm, but Chloe and Matt’s chosen spot? They stayed open just for us.
That’s the thing about New Yorkers. We will be out there working if we can. 😂
Blackouts, floods, you name it! We pull together and 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 cheeky cocktail at the Andaz Hotel and catch up.
The Ceremony
Once Chloe, Matt, their friends, and family arrived at the NYPL, it was everything they’d dreamed of.
There had been so much excitement and drama that day — from biblical rain, to a city practically underwater, to rethinking the carefully orchestrated day we had originally planned — but when it was time for this precious couple’s wedding, 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.
The Photoshoot
The next day, NYC gave us the picture-perfect weather we’d been hoping for – a gorgeous late-September day. We knocked everything off the list: Central Park, DUMBO, and all the iconic spots we had planned for. It was a full day of capturing those magic moments, and the photoshoot turned out even better than we could’ve imagined.
The Takeaway
Chloe and Matt were impeccably awesome throughout the entire experience. They rolled with every curveball as their entire day got rewired and reimagined.
They trusted us, they trusted each other, they trusted the magic of NYC, and we delivered.
In the end, they got the magical wedding they’d always dreamed of AND an outrageous (as in: never before in recorded history) story to take home to Australia!
After the dust (and rain!) had settled, I asked Chloe and Matt what stood out most about their wedding day:
“Well, we loved not having to think about anything.
If there was a problem, we knew Jenny would take care of it.”
That is exactly the kind of peace of mind we aim to give every couple we work with.
