A City Hall Wedding With a Special Guest in Tow
“Mitch and I weren’t together for very long before I got pregnant,” says Sarah-Jane Ashby. A few years later, they decided to get married, and their daughter, Marlowe, was the star of the guest list. Below, Sarah-Jane shares the whole story…
“I’d just moved to New York, but I was traveling to L.A. a lot for work. This guy in L.A. messaged me on a dating app, saying, ‘You’re thousands of miles away. That’s such a shame.’ I remember thinking, Who is this guy holding a fish in his photo?! But we ended up chatting, and the next time I was in L.A., we met up for burgers and beers. For both of us, it turned serious very quickly. I’d never loved anyone like that.”
“He agreed to move for us to be together, and then I realized I was pregnant. We were in love, but we didn’t want to get married right away just because we were having a baby. In 2020, Mitch moved to New York, he started a new job, the pandemic hit, and I gave birth to Marlowe. Our family was really forged by fire. But we rolled with it.”
“Marlowe was two when Mitch asked me to marry him inside a photo booth. Then, for 10 minutes, the photos didn’t come out. We finally asked someone, and they said, ‘Oh, yeah, that happens sometimes. But you can always retake it.’ We were like, ‘No, we can’t! We just got engaged in the photo booth!’ Thankfully, we were able to get them out, just a little scuffed.”
“We knew we wanted to do something in Wales, where I’m from, since my grandmother lived there. Because of cost, we ended up going to City Hall in New York to get married. Later on, in Wales, we did a small ceremony followed by dinner at a pub for 30 people. It all felt very intimate.”
“Getting a number and waiting for our turn reminded me of being a kid at the butcher shop. We were there with a hundred other couples, but I loved that it wasn’t all about us. I think a lot of New Yorkers understand a City Hall wedding to be a way to commemorate your relationship with the city.”
“Marlowe has big energy, and I mean that in the best way. Our friends Jessica and Bart served as our witnesses and Marlowe-wrangler.”
“I really wanted to wear vintage, so I was thrilled to find this ’60s, Jackie O.-style dress. ”
“I met my friend Jessica through work. Years ago, when I said moving to New York was a big dream of mine, she said, ‘Come crash on my couch for two months!’ After Marlowe was born, Jessica and her husband Bart were a huge support system. They’re friends who feel like family. After the ceremony, the four of us went out for dinner and dancing.”
“I definitely reject the idea that life has to follow a certain schedule. A friend of mine was engaged, and she wanted a baby so badly, but the wedding kept getting postponed because of the pandemic. She told me we inspired her to throw the rule book out the window and not wait just so things would be in the ‘right’ order.”
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Sarah-Jane.
P.S. More weddings, including seven more City Hall weddings and how did you make your wedding feel true to you?
(Photos by Sylvie Rosokoff, except the photo booth ones, which came from Sarah-Jane.)
Comments
75 commentsSuch a beautiful story and photos! I live far away from NYC, but the idea of an NYC City Hall wedding seems so magical. And, if you haven’t seen the new-ish Materialists from A24 Studios, the end credits take place over (I think) live footage from that City Hall marriage licence corridor!
This made me smile and cry. :) Beautiful!
Ahh, the proposal in the photo booth! Such a sweet idea to cherish such an important memory!
Love your story. Thanks for sharing the goodness that the news misses.
This made me smile! Thanks!,
My husband and I were married @ NYC City Hall in 2003. During this time couples would sit on wooden benches waiting for their name to be called. After what seemed to be an eternity, I quickly excused myself for the bathroom. I missed our name call!! We laughed as this could have been our last ditch attempt, but thankfully waited our turn. 22 yrs, a beautiful daughter, and a world of experiences later, we continue to be married…sometimes missing the mark, but always making our way to laughter.
On ads… I read this on my Mac Book, using Chrome. No blockers. I had two small ads, for Kindle and American Express. And there’s a little Progressive one at the bottom. But I didn’t even notice the two ads in the middle of the post until I saw other comments and scrolled back. So it’s not crazy ads for everyone?? Love their wedding story, sometimes going against “tradition” and timelines is so clearly the right way, and so sweet and perfect for them.
Just stopping to gush about the dress. I love love love it – the cut, the color, the pattern, the texture of the fabric…just gorgeous!
oh.my.heart. ✨🫶✨ that’s a true love story (inside a story… inside a story) right there 💛 beautiful photos 🎞️ best wishes 🌼🥂🍾
I love this. a year or two after college I was visiting two friends who were living in New York. We had all been friends during school but they didn’t become a couple until afterwards. While I was there, sleeping on their ikea couch, they went to city hall to register as domestic partners so that one could be a dependent on the other’s health insurance. They were treating it like a standard errand but I insisted we mark the occasion! I went to City Hall with them, they did the photo opp in front of the mural holding their certificate, then I treated them to celebratory bagels and coffee. Afterwards they both shared they were really glad to have someone make a fuss over them when they wouldn’t have don it themselves. 15+ years later they are now in Denver, married ten years with two little ones.
This made me smile big. I love Sarah-Jane’s yellow dress and flowers. So happy looking!
what a beautiful wedding and lovely family! the whole vibe feels a lot like my own city hall wedding right down to the yellow flowers and the short dress plus adorable daughter. fun fact though: our daughter got chicken pox THE DAY OF after the note “we have chickenpox” had been up in her daycare for six months!
Doing things in your own best order reminds me of a favorite story in my friend circle, where my Type A bestie learned that maybe you don’t need to Plan Everything for it to work out. My best friend from college had a whole list of things he wanted in a relationship. When we were both in grad school, he’d call me to debrief, weighing different aspects of the list against his recent dates. Then one day he called to say he’d met someone, and I was mentally pulling up the list to prep for the conversation. And then he said, “so, remember the list?” [yes, of course I remember the list.] “I threw it out. It doesn’t matter anymore. The list is just her.”
so sweet!! love the name marlowe, it was our second choice for our daughter’s name but we went with a family name ebba instead. will def use if we have another girl!
Love the dress! Love the flowers! And love this line: “I think a lot of New Yorkers understand a City Hall wedding to be a way to commemorate your relationship with the city.” I too got married at City Hall in NYC (10 years ago), and she’s so right,..there were three of us unifying our relationship that day – me, my husband, and this glorious city.
I am truly so happy for Sarah-Jane, Mitch, and Harlowe and their personal, authentic path to becoming a family and husband and wife. I think that is the most special thing in the world for their child to witness love like that. I’m all for shattering traditional paths to coupledom and family building. After getting married (14 years ago) and having kids, I totally feel like my wedding should be NOW to celebrate where our journey has taken us through all sorts of crazy ups and downs. It would be meaningful in a totally different way. I get the vow renewals and recommitment ceremonies. We’ve gone a long medical journey with our first child and when we get past it, I could see our family have a vision setting ceremony where we decide the life we want together as a family. A family wedding. When my husband and I were in the pits, I dreamt of raising my kids in a village of women, friends, extended family who my children and I can easily turn to for a snack, meal, conversation, or laugh.
This resonates so much with me. About to celebrate 10 years with my husband — no kids, but a whole other life than we had when we met. I would love to do a wedding again to represent our life *now*
I love their story! Cup of Jo has featured a bunch of city hall weddings and I swear if I could have a do over (with my same husband!) I would get married this way, so nice and simple! Then meet just a handful of people for a nice dinner. Perfect!
Love this so much – I got married in 2022 with my long time love (together since 2004!) and my favorite part of the ceremony was having my 4 and 7 there in every photo.
Friends ARE family <3. Love the dress and Marlowe adorable in all the pics!
This really touched my heart. The simplicity of it brings out the joy and focus on family and friendship. Love!
I also love the spotlight on your wonderful friends who are family! As a fellow transplant, I know how real these types of friends are <3
Love this! I also didn’t get married until my daughter was 18 months old. We were engaged during the pandemic, so we were waiting for restrictions to ease, and then I got pregnant. We had the sweetest flower girl :) this is such a lovely wedding, and very New York.
Just this morning I was cleaning out my closet and threw on my wedding dress for a twirl, as one does. And I thought about how I wished our daughter was there for our wedding! Our marriage has truly been tested the “in sickness and health” portion of our vows this past year. We spent most of it in the hospital with our girl. This post has me dreaming up an intimate vow renewal to celebrate what we’ve come through together – with our big energy girl present :)
That is a wonderful idea! I hope you enjoy every minute when you get to it!
Cheers to such a beautiful city hall wedding! And I love the story of getting engaged in a photobooth- how cool and memorable! Totally agree about doing things your own way, one you throw out the rule book of “should” then you figure out your actual ‘musts’ in life. We had our civil ceremony earlier this year then stayed the weekend at a fancy hotel in our city, later on we went on our actual honeymoon to Paris and London and then afterwards, just recently had our second wedding (celebrating our Jewish and Chinese cultural backgrounds). We kept joking to each other in the lead up to our cultural celebrations that we were already on our ‘second marriage’ – gotta find the humour and fun in doing things our own way!
Obsessed with this! How beautiful. :-)
Love this. I also got married at city hall in NYC with our 2.5 yr old daughter as our only “guest!”
Just this morning I was cleaning out my closet and threw on my we
Gosh this is all so lovely…and also ! Jessica’s Dress?? anyone…I love it.
Rainy day in Seattle, loved this fun pop of joy. I may also be dying to know where her friend’s sunsety colored dress is from :)
This entire story makes me so dang happy! Congrats Sarah-Jane & family!!!
Everything about this is so lovely. The lemon yellow dress perfection. My kind of wedding!
My husband and I eloped at SF City Hall in 2016 in part because of stories like this that I read on Cup of Jo! Everytime a friend of mine gets engaged, my advice is “pick a city and ELOPE!” I love the entire vibe of this wedding. Her dress is beautiful!
We got married at SF City Hall in 2013! I remember looking around at all the happy little clusters of people waiting for their number and said, “What a fun little hall!” We still pull that line out sometimes.
Sarah-Jane, I’m a vintage hound, so I recognized your look as 60s before I even read the piece! Mission accomplished. The whole fam looked incredible, too, of course.
Years ago my husband and I got married at a local insurance company in Chinatown with our 2 children aged 6 mo and 2 yrs in tow- in front of a giant fish tank and neon rainbow for good luck as per the marriage celebrant. Here here for doing things in your own special way!!
I love that Marlowe also gets to have special memories of the day they were married.
Thus far, my day has been filled with police reports, endless banking automated message systems, and frustrating work with flakey shopify developers. This just blasted my mood with sunshine, joy, riotous reverence for love. Especially the Wales bit! Welsh people are such good people! Gosh I how I would have LOVED to be at my parents wedding! Gorgeous family. xoxoxo thank you for turning things around!
Oh my gosh—I’m a romance novelist, and this is genuinely one of the most beautiful real-life love stories I’ve ever read. It feels like a modern romance come to life. Congratulations to everyone involved for staying true to your values and creating something so uniquely yours!
Lovely pictures. It is beautiful that the bride wore yellow and Marlowe wore white! Congratulations to your family! Twenty years ago, we had our first wedding in a city hall in LA and I don’t even have a picture (second wedding ceremony happened in India a few years later as my husband’s family was against our wedding due to caste difference). If memory serves me right, I might have even gone back to work right after the wedding.
Can co-sign not worrying about the order of how things work out! I just got married to my partner of 7 years in September with our 1.5 year old daughter serving as flower girl!
Love this story…but the UX experience with the ads in the lower right flooding my screen is really frustrating and stopping me from visiting the site as much as I used to do.
Appreciate you letting us know, Mia! We will talk with our team today.
Just want to add that an ad for Jared diamonds came up right in the middle of this post- I thought it was part of the story at first.
It’s strange, I haven’t had any issues with ads. There is usually a small banner at the bottom of my phone on COJ but never has kept me from the view- much better than most sites honestly. I wonder if there are differences between browsers or users but just popping in to say no issues here.
Such a great story!
Your whole family are gorgeous – congratulations, wishes for a happy life (and goodness, what a beautiful bride you were!)
What a treat it is to see such a simple and lovely wedding. The brightness of those flowers pales in comparison to the joy on your faces, especially Marlowe’s!
Love the idea that there is no “right order.” What is right for you is right for you and if anyone else thinks it’s wrong, that is their problem. You have to do you. This couple seems so happy and confident and content with their beautiful daughter. Everyone should have such terrific friends. I am so thrilled for them.
The yellow and Marlowe’s name and personality truly shined through this post. Wishing you many years of happiness.
So beautiful and a true, real love story!
The photobooth engagement photos are ICONIC! I’m so glad they were able to get them out.
Moral for the single ladies: don’t dismiss men holding fish!
Haha. I thought that as well!
“Sunbeam” – perfect word!!
Beautiful in every way!
Feels like a real life Catastrophe! I love it. Congratulations! And as a former Philadelphia City Hall bride thank you COJ for always sharing City Hall weddings. My favorite!
I’m an SF city hall wedding haver too and I feel the same!
This is absolutely lovely! Cup of Jo – the ads made this almost impossible to read today – they’re taking up huge chunks of the screen and there are more ads on the screen than the post itself.
Oh gosh thanks for telling us, we’re on it.
Same! Are the ads a new thing? I never ever got them before…not necessarily opposed, but definitely wondering…always been there, but my new laptop changed my settings or something? LOVE this wedding and the little girl who gets to see her mommy marry her daddy, and have her own flowers to hold!
Hi! We have had ads for a few years now but always appreciate feedback if something seems off or if they are too intrusive.
Try the uBlock Origin extension on your browser. I haven’t seen an ad in years, not even on Youtube or entertainment streaming sites with the ads-level subscription. Free and effective.
I LOVE this story! Mine is so similar; I met my now-husband on a dating app in December 2015; we moved in together in March 2016; I was pregnant by October of 2016; we had our first girl, Frankie, in June 2017; we married in September 2018. In 2025 we have two more daughters, Charlie and LouLou, and life couldn’t be more hectic, messy, or great. The lesson? Always be willing to throw the playbook out the window. Thank you so much for sharing, Sarah-Jane. your pictures and family are beautiful!
I have a Frankie, February 2017 edition!
I absolutely love your wedding look and can feel the love from those awesome engagement photos! What a lovely, beautiful family and so lucky to have such great friend support! Blessings to you all : )
Love the retro feel to the dress. But commenting mostly to say it seems the pop up ads on the site seem to be more than usual, and the movement of some of them really distracts. Makes it hard to read the articles (reading on laptop).
Thank you for this feedback! We will chat with our ad team.
Ad person here if this helps – it’s specifically the AdThrive_Video_StickyOutstream player popping up again and again and again and being rather intrusive. It looks like it’s triggering a new player popup on a really short loop, and jumping places as it does. Likely something funky in the WP plugin settings I’d say.
Very helpful thank you!
I’m with you on the ads. Distracting and so not part of the COJ identity. Often the reason I just leave.
“Who is this guy holding a fish in his photo?!” hahahaha, always holding a fish, they all hold a fish! this is lovely, what a sunbeam of a day!
Yes! Agreed, on all three counts.
You know, until I read your comment I was assuming it was a goldfish in a bowl, cat-in-the-hat style. But probably not!