A little party never killed nobody!
From New York to the UK – Jason and Glen loved playing the Great Gatsby so much they did it twice, as Jason tells PWM.
Photos by Steven Rosen Photography in New York and This World Wedding Photography in Sunderland.
We met at the gym, where I was an instructor. Glen was a participant in the classes but then we lost contact. We met up later through mutual friends and saw each other as part of the group before eventually getting together.
Our friendship grew and grew and turned into a relationship and we’d been together for seven years when we thought it would be nice to be married. We’d arranged a trip to Paris in November 2014 to celebrate Glen’s birthday, but I had no idea what was about to happen when we went up the Eiffel Tower.
We were at the top of the tower and Glen went to get champagne – which I refused because it was so expensive for a plastic flute.Then he proposed and I wished I had just bought the champagne!
I wanted to elope, but Glen wanted a wedding at home so the family could attend. We ended up having the best of both. I booked a holiday to the USA, asked our friends to come, and then decided to have the wedding in New York as part of our trip. We then decided to have an evening party on our return and Glen surprised me by including a blessing earlier in the day for family and close friends.
We went for ‘Gatsby’ style in both New York and Sunderland.We do like a good dress-up! I arranged the New York trip, with help from our friends. The wedding was held at Wagner Cove in Central Park, with a meal in a French restaurant called Boucherie after the ceremony. We hired full evening suits in New York, which we wore for the entire day, with two-tone black and white brogues and New York to Sunderland cufflinks. We were very sure of the style, and the hotel in New York was very art deco, which tied in with our theme.
Glen arranged the blessing and reception back home in Sunderland, finding everything to get the matching Gatsby look. My daughter Erin was grooms-maid in a full-length Gatsby style gown, my son Cody was best man and he and our two best friends wore evening suits.
We walked down the aisle together with Lola Saunders – a family friend who had appeared on the X Factor – singing John Lennon’s Imagine. We didn’t feel nervous but were excited, trying to notice everything going on around us.
A humanist conducted ceremonies in each location and we used the same words at both. My daughter gave a reading at the Sunderland one, about two people loving each other.
It was just us and two close friends in New York; small and intimate. But in Sunderland we had 60 day guests and 300 in the evening – we were quite overwhelmed by the turnout! All our guests dressed up in the Gatsby theme and it was bold and ‘like something from the Oscars’, as one guest said.We started off with some music by Fergie from The Great Gatsby film – A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.
For more on Jason & Glen’s wedding, please see our latest issue!