Last-minute wedding hacks: how I got married in New York in under 48 hours

The setting: New York. My partner-in-crime Craig and I are on an impromptu vacation of sorts, realising it’d otherwise be 3 months until we saw each other again.

Friday evening, after an intense and heartfelt conversation: “Let’s get married!”

“Here? Now?”

“Why not? It’ll be cheaper and less hassle!”

18:42 – Update Facebook status to “Engaged”. The congratulations flood in.

We discovered that in the state of New York, a marriage license is available for $35. You can get married as soon as 24 hours after obtaining it, and as easily as just turning up at the City Clerk’s office with a witness. We sanity-checked: we had the right forms of ID. We could take an extra few days of emergency vacation. We knew a few people in the city we could theoretically ask to come along, though most of them were far enough removed acquaintances that they’d find it a little weird.

But then, of course, I got a little carried away. Think Bridezilla on a deadline.

“Let’s do it in Central Park! There’s this site – they do elopements. They could marry us anywhere!”

And so the crazy train started rolling.

We decided not to commit to anything before we had the license, just in case our pesky Britishness or my lack of passport caused problems. Nevertheless, we — ok, I — spent the weekend glued to Yelp and Google, researching everything, and even forced my shiny new fiancé to help me scout out Macy’s on 34th to lay the groundwork for the shopping spree of a lifetime.

As you can see from the photo above, we got the works. Tuxedo hire, dress, accessories, jewellery, bouquet, hairdo, photographer, limo and we even arrived at the pavilion by horse and carriage. Officiant and license, of course; champagne goes without saying; and a lovely dinner to round the evening off.

No veil, no cake, and no relatives squabbling over old feuds. No clichéd dance or cheesy toasts. Oh, we’ll have all that eventually – the family won’t let us get away without some kind of reception on our native shores – but it was nice to pull off something so personal and yes, insane, over 3000 miles away from home.

Pulling off the organisational feat of a lifetime

Most brides-to-be have a year or more to plan, I’m told.

I had 48 hours. We got the license at around 1:30pm on the Monday, and were married at 2pm on the Wednesday.

Before we had the license, I’d emailed cancellable stuff: the officiant, who was away all weekend, and two photographers, of whom I picked the most creative (and also cheapest). Sunday I finally had my first conversation with the officiant, who was lovely, but somewhat akin to the telephone calls I have with my grandmother – lots of repeating, shouting, and random irrelevancies about mainframe computers. Still, we didn’t have time to get a friend ordained by the ULC or find a sympathetic nondenominational minister, so she’d do. (And did, nicely.)

Also, as we’d extended our stay in New York an extra week, we spent much of the weekend panicking about ending up sleeping in cardboard boxes and walking home. The return flight I’d booked via Continental had a clause I’d completely missed, the telephone support guy being very understanding — “yeah, most people never read that stuff” — but similarly unhelpful: “you agreed to a non-refundable non-movable fare, madam”. And so, the first appearance of the star of this show, Mr Platinum Credit Card, to book a brand new flight from vayama (a site I’d not heard of but which was $1000+ cheaper than all alternatives on a one-way ticket).

For the accommodation, AirBnB superhosts came through like a dream. I’m a long-term user and fan of the service, but the problem with New York seemed to be a combination of unresponsiveness and price; we needed replies, like, now. Fortunately, after splitting our week in two, we found two places that were well-located, within budget and seemed nice — and they were both incredible. Our first host, Alastair, completely made us feel like family and cooked a fantastic breakfast for us every morning! I can’t big up AirBnB enough, even though the “standby” list got us nowhere.

48 hours to go…

Monday was an interesting day. While waiting at the Clerk’s office, I made appointments for hair, nails, and — thanks to the Yelping — managed to get a same-day appointment at a bridal boutique. This took a surprisingly small number of total calls — I love New York. Though it’s a little bizarre how some places are closed Mondays.

The boutique was a long shot, and more based on its promising Yelp reviews than my hope of finding a dress. I had a plan involving Macy’s, but thought I’d head along to see what it was like. The phone conversation pretty much went like this: “Do you have any off-the-rack dresses in a 12 or so? I need it for Wednesday” “Sure, we have a couple”. Hopes weren’t too high.

Amazingly, the Bridal Garden delivered. The assistant had already put two dresses aside, and the first one fit near-perfectly, was exactly the right length, and looked incredible. This was the moment when it hit me: not having the license in my hand, or arranging time and place with the officiant, but seeing myself in white. Wow. I’m getting married.

I couldn’t be choosy; I bought it, with a bonus 15% discount, and walked away with my new treasure wrapped in paper and plastic.

Alternatives I was considering include David’s Bridal, which is quite close to the Garden — I’d scouted it the day before, and not been impressed, but that’s possibly because the selection was so large it’s a little overwhelming. The dresses also felt fairly cheap, but it’d be a good one-stop shop for everything at once if you’re really in a hurry. Macy’s had some nice white dresses, and I hear J-Crew do a good bridal range (but there wasn’t one in New York that carried it).

We also managed to find a tuxedo rental place, Baldwin Formals, that came up from a Yelp search for “last minute tuxedo” and sure enough, offered a tuxedo package to be picked up Wednesday morning. And a couple of streets away in the Diamond District, a jeweller was preparing a couple of white gold rings for us at a price he haggled out of his manager — no doubt a show for the crazy Brits with the credit card, and I was crossing my fingers that the shop would even be there on Wednesday, but so many of the over-friendly, beckoning windows along that street were more offputting than encouraging.

24 hours to go…

Tuesday I had to head into work (we have an office in Chelsea) which made logistics interesting. I spent most of the day hunting sight-unseen for accessories, getting my nails done at Bliss 57 (online booking is awesome), and arranging the remaining pieces. I booked dinner via OpenTable. I was planning on using Uber for transportation, but New York traffic is what it is, so I picked a car service to take us to the park. I gave up at the horrendous price of bouquets on the phone, so ducked into the first flower shop I saw and asked them to create one. The price was still pretty horrendous. I guess white ribbon is hard to get or something.

Macy’s and Century 21 came through on the bag, jewellery, undies (who normally carries around a white strapless bra? Not I), umbrella and pashmina front, though I spent a futile hour in the Fashion District hunting down lace for an impromptu shawl that I decided was too costly in the end, and wasted more time hopping into a few bridal-looking shops in pursuit of hair accessories. I decided in the end to let my hair be, especially with the rain on the horizon. Note to self: don’t overcomplicate when you don’t have time to even complicate in the first place.

After work, thanks to New York’s late opening hours, I managed to triumphantly find a pair of shoes that fit — hurrah for searching in my size on the Internet beforehand, and boo for having size 11 feet in the first place — and we were ready to go. Whew.

6 hours to go…

Wednesday morning was a triumph of todo-list mastery, military precision, and SMS coordination. In jogging gear, I dashed from florist to hair salon to ATM to our home base to change, while Craig ran around a much better-planned route to pick up rings and tux. I briefly entertained the notion of ducking into a beauty bar for makeup, and then came to my senses as I saw the clock.

Amazingly, everything I’d bought at the last minute fitted, and bizarrely all the accessories I’d picked were the same exact shade of ivory as my dress (seriously, it’s spooky). Craig’s tux fitted like a charm, though the shop clearly thought he was off to a funeral rather than his own wedding; the rings existed, and weren’t made of tinfoil; my hair was still in one piece, and the makeup I’d had to buy didn’t make me look like a clown.

We stepped out of the trendy Hell’s Kitchen loft we were staying at, with a sendoff from our fabulous host (whose wife, a florist on the side, had made a buttonhole to match my bouquet!), and into the waiting car (yay, it turned up!).

Everything worked, and the day was full of small victories. Most of it was on time, and we’d long since given up on perfection so we didn’t care. The rain interfered a little, but not too much, and I was so stunned it was a) actually happening and b) not a complete disaster that I was happy to get soaked. The hem of my dress is coated in Central Park mud, and I still haven’t got around to organising a dry cleaning back at home, but we pulled it off — from ceremony to champagne to celebratory dinner — and I thank the Internet for making it all possible. Of course, nothing goes quite as planned: we gatecrashed the Plaza (if buying $26-a-glass champagne counts as ‘gatecrashing’) instead of a trip to the Brooklyn Bridge, but we were too happy to care.

Wednesday, 3:30PM – Update Facebook status to “Married”.

The “WTF”s flood in.

Afterword

This industry prides itself on long planning, expensive everything and over-the-top traditions. We had some traditions, bits and pieces that were feasible and meant something to us, but the joy of time pressure is it makes you realise what’s important. Our thinking went like this: what’s the minimum we need to make this happen? What’s the minimum we want? And what’s the icing that the silly female half of this dynamic duo would kind of really like?

We only needed a ceremony with a witness. We wanted, for various reasons, a funky location with plenty of photos to share with the many who couldn’t be there with us. And I, in my feminine frippery, wanted something nice to wear (having just said that Friday I’d be happy in jeans and a t-shirt… caught in hypocrisy!), and that entailed hair, shoes and all that jazz. Plus, I wanted a challenge.

You don’t need to bow to the demands of the wedding industry, but do note that as a cost-saving venture, doing everything at the absolute last minute does not come cheap. I doubt (well, after this experience, I think it highly improbable) you could organise a full reception for 100 people in 48 hours, but a quiet ceremony in a white dress is easy enough. Embossed invitations and a ceilidh band? Not so much, but why not give it a go. Just be careful if you’re on a budget!

I’m sure there are people out there with even crazier stories, and I can’t wait to hear them all.

This has been a long and personal post – regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly. Feel free to contact me on jennie at trendpreneur dot com if you are planning a similar crazy adventure and want to hear more or tell me your story.