The Wedding Party- Liana And Josh Doyle

[Photos by the Uncommon Image]

"Josh and I met through church three years ago--I saw him at an evening service, found out who he was, and then made sure to show up to a fundraiser he was co-hosting that a mutual friend invited me to.  He then came to a cocktail party I hosted for the 20's and 30's--he was the first to show and last to leave, and we were more or less inseparable from then on...."

More of Josh and Liana's story below:

"We'd talked about marriage for a while when we learned his family was coming up from Florida for Christmas.  His stepmother hadn't been on a plane in 30 years, and so I said we should just get married when they were here at Christmastime.  So while we didn't start planning anything until he proposed October 10th, we had been thinking about it for a while.  We tried to keep it small, simple, and intimate--and with only two and a half months to plan, we had to.  Two weeks before the wedding, my father was admitted to the hospital for what turned out to be a cancerous tumor on his hip bone the size of a grapefruit.  We really didn't know if he'd be able to come to the wedding at all, but not only did he come, but he walked me down the aisle and we had our first dance (with the help of his walker).

We had a bagpiper greet guests and then play them up Fifth Avenue the five blocks to the reception.  I wore a dress I found at The Bridal Garden (a non-profit that benefits charter schools in Brooklyn--I did Teach For America in the Bronx), my best friend's veil, and my mother's sapphire and diamond band (her wedding gift from my father).  My two sisters and his two brothers were a wedding party.

The wedding felt very much like "us" and very perfectly New York.  We were married in the same church where I first saw him, which is the same church my parents were married in 30 years ago. " -Liana