I Do. In Public.
Money tight? Getting hitched in one of the city's parks is a cheap thrill.
(Photo by Nicole Monforti)I KISSED MY BRIDE, Jennifer, under a rose-wrapped trellis as an audience of friends, family, and peripheral parkgoers whooped and cheered. She and I strolled a manicured garden, smelling the cut grass and peering over the hedges to glimpse the Boston skyline.
All this for just 50 bucks.
Our wedding took place in September in the Back Bay Fens at the Kelleher Rose Garden, a public park stewarded by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department. Weddings are permitted between April 1 and December 1 in five city parks at a cost of $50 for Boston residents and $100 for non-residents. There were 286 wedding permits issued in 2007, according to Paul McCaffrey, the department's director of permitting.
A park wedding in Boston is a no-frills, fair-weather affair: It cannot last for more than an hour, attendance (including the wedding party) is capped at 50, and music, food, tents, decorations, signs, chairs, tables, and props of any kind are prohibited.
The no-frills approach happens to be what many couples seek. While planning their wedding in Boston, Chris Chiavelli and his now wife, Mary, who currently live in Simi Valley, California, realized that their desire for something simple, intimate, and affordable was difficult to find. When they discovered that they could wed in the Public Garden, they applied for a permit and had their wedding there in July. "I would 100 percent recommend this idea to anybody who's looking for a simple, nice wedding in Boston," says Chiavelli. He notes that marrying in a public park has unique advantages: Looking at their wedding photos now, he and Mary notice bemused strangers in some of the shots. "You can see all the smiles on their faces as they're watching us get married in the background. It's kind of neat to have an audience like that."
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