Couple marries on NYC street

The coronavirus pandemic has led some couples to wonder whether they should cancel their weddings, but two New York brides found a creative way to tie the knot.

Reilly Jennings, 28, and Amanda Wheeler, 38, were planning to get married in October, but with coronavirus wreaking havoc in New York, that seemed unlikely.

Deborah Birx, head of the U.S. response to the coronavirus, says about 56% of the cases in the nation are coming out of the New York metro area. The city is now in virtual lockdown.

The gym Wheeler works at has closed and laid off the entire staff except for her, so the couple decided to get married to ensure she would have insurance, Jennings said. “We were really not sure what was going to happen come the fall, and we didn’t want to wait,” Jennings said. “We just wanted to get married.”

Marriage license in hand, they were planning to get married at the courthouse after taking a few work calls at home. They were walking out the door when Jennings saw that Mayor Bill de Blasio had announced the marriage bureau would also be closed.

“I freaked out, cried a lot, had some wine pretty early in the day and then sort of just tried to think of what are we going to do?” Jennings said. “Amanda was very calm; I was not calm.”

Jennings, who works in marketing at Wework, said the pair frantically messaged their friends looking for someone who could perform the ceremony. One, Matt Wilson, said he was ordained by the city clerk and could marry them.

A friend lent her a white jumpsuit and the couple walked 10 blocks to Wilson’s apartment, where he was self-isolating with his wife. Music blasted and bubbles spilled out the fourth-story window as Wilson read a passage from “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez while they stood beneath his apartment.

The couple then exchanged “I do’s” in a ceremony that Jennings said took about three minutes.

Contributing: Associated Press