Project Runway judge, New York Times best-selling author Elaine Welteroth said ‘I do’ to musician Jonathan Singletary in a virtual block party wedding outside their New York apartment.
Elaine and Jonathan met at the young age of 12 through church, but it was only in 2013 when the pair would be reunited as adults that a romance began to blossom. They became engaged in 2016. Their wedding date, May 10, 2020, was chosen for its special numerical order: 5-10-20.
“There was so much symbolism in this sequence of numbers [5-10-20] that only come together once in a lifetime,” Elaine explains to Vogue. “Also, it fell on a Sunday—the day we met as kids and saw each other every week growing up. But it wasn’t just any Sunday, it would be Mother’s Day!”
They were meant to marry at a church friend’s home close to the church in Northern California where they first met. However, with the coronavirus pandemic, those plans were cancelled. Instead, they threw a “virtual quarantine wedding” on their stoop in Brooklyn.
Their friends and family all jumped in to make sure the new plan was a success. The stoop was decorated with a whimsical floral arch that framed the front door.
All 200 guests, even the ones attending via Zoom, were given a white dress code. The in-person guests followed social distancing protocols and were provided gloves and masks on-site in addition to white parasols, bubbles, seeds to plant flowers, and homemade brownies from Elaine’s mom’s family recipe in a gift bag.
The bride made her walk down the ‘aisle’ wearing a label-less dress she’s owned for years, and her mother’s wedding veil. She even did her own makeup in the backseat of a car.
The wedding was officiated via Zoom by Dr. Stanley Long, the founding pastor of South Bay Community Church, the couple’s home church in California.
Then, the virtual block party began. Each guest had been sent a playlist to join in on the party. Their friend also DJ’ed live for the guests.
Even though it wasn’t the wedding they had planned, it was still a special one because their loved ones were there and they could hold it on their original date.
