Last Train Out with Ana Parra: NYC Elopement Style
My 13th wedding anniversary is coming up. An unlucky number for the luckiest of marriages. Our wedding was untraditional, a ceremony in the City Clerk’s Office in New York City where the only guest was our friend Matt, who happened to be in the city and became our default documentarian. Lucky for us, Matt is a fabulous photographer and the photos we have to commemorate the event captured the dreamiest of days in black and white and color.
I often talk about our elopement. I share about the wedding ceremony officiated by a theatrical city clerk who declared that “by the laws of the great state of New York” we were married. I talk about our vow exchange on the High Line, where Ian and I wept as we read our vows surrounded by tourists and people on their lunch break, and our memorable wedding dinner at Daniel where we treated ourselves to the most expensive meal of our lives after having one too many delicious old-fashioneds … leading to not remembering any of the dishes that made up the most expensive meal of our lives.
I show off those pictures taken by our friend. Pictures which show two people on cloud nine. It’s one thing to marry your best friend in the best city in the world. It’s another to be so damn pleased with yourself for pulling off the exact wedding you wanted. The smugness is strong in those pictures.
We were/are smitten with each other and with the day we created.
One thing I often overlook when talking about that day is what we wore. Our wedding style wasn’t exactly well thought out. The plan was to give this elopement the full wedding treatment. Nails were going to get done, someone would be found to do my makeup and accessories would be secured in the days before the wedding in the fashion capital of the world (fight me, Paris). None of that ended up happening.
It’s not that we didn’t care about aesthetics or the details. We’re a couple who like to dwell deeply in the details sometimes. This is why our home still lacks curtains. But our elopement was our Plan B and Plan B’s often don’t have the level of planning that Plan A’s do.
Plan A was a destination wedding in Colombia where my family has a mountain home that would have made a beautiful backdrop for a small wedding. The “Save the Dates” were printed and ready to be sent out when we got some bad news about a family member who was essential to the wedding. Plan A was nixed.
The first version of Plan B was a small wedding close to home, and then after realizing we wanted ease over pomp and circumstance, it became a courthouse wedding in a city that means so much to us. Our outfits reflected these last-minute changes.
Ian wore a Banana Republic suit that he had worn a few times but still looked dapper in. My dress was a Diane von Furstenberg lace shift that I had quickly decided was bridal enough and felt like me enough. My sweet friend made me a short veil, and I added some bright blue suede wedges because we needed a good luck charm.
For a Plan B wedding, I think we nailed our style. Not just because we looked good, but because at the end of the day, it didn’t matter what dress I wore or that I forgot to wear lipstick. We had said “I do” in a city where marriage equality was the law, four years before Obergefell v. Hodges. Getting married alongside all kinds of beautiful couples made us feel beautiful, too.
If I were to describe our wedding style, it would be scrappy but elegant — not super polished but not too shabby either. Maybe we wouldn’t have made it to the pages of Vogue – although I think Anna would have approved.
When you look at the pictures, you won’t see those blue suede shoes appear too often. I changed them out for nude ballet flats so I could be more comfortable walking through the city. Maybe I missed out on the luck of having “something blue” on me for my whole wedding day, but I felt pretty lucky already and still do.
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