Ariel Ball and Ross Weinstein held fast to their original wedding date, and were married April 25 in Stuyvesant Cove Park along the East River in Manhattan. Mark Stokely, a Universal Life minister and a friend of the couple, rode his bicycle from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to officiate.
“April 25 ended up being the perfect day,” said Ms. Ball, with temperatures reaching 65 degrees. “The sun was shining and we were surrounded by our immediate family.”
With a laugh Ms. Ball said that April 25 was also considered a good date for just about anything — a nod toward a line in the movie “Miss Congeniality,” when a character asked to describe her idea of a perfect date (romantic), instead came up with April 25, “because it’s not too hot, not too cold.”
They originally expected around 200 guests — more than 50 from the groom’s side alone were expected to fly in from Mexico — for the celebration at Liberty Warehouse, an events space in Brooklyn, before they had to change their plans because of the coronavirus pandemic.
On April 13, the couple drove to the Town of North Hempstead to pick up a marriage license and gave some thought to perhaps a small gathering on the rooftop of their building, but then the co-op board officially shut down access to the roof.
The couple matched on two dating apps, first in 2016 on Bumble, but nothing happened, and then on the League in early 2017, and when again nothing happened, Ms. Ball reached out to him.
Ms. Ball, 32, who graduated from Emory University, is a first vice president in the consulting group of CBRE, the commercial real estate firm in New York, and the chairwoman of its Tri-State Women’s Network.
“She was persistent,” said Mr. Weinstein, 31, an associate general counsel at the Raine Group, a media, technology and telecommunications-focused merchant bank in New York. He graduated from Harvard and received a law degree from Cornell.
“She was really interesting,’’ said Mr. Weinstein, who worked at a large Manhattan law firm at the time. “My job didn’t allow for interesting. I worked day and night. I was impressed she had initiative.”
They met a couple of days later at Big Bar in the East Village.
“She has a wonderful personality,” he said. “She didn’t only make me smile, but other people around us smile.”
He proposed in January 2019 at the skating rink in Prospect Park. “I showed up at the rink, and the Zamboni was about to come and clear the ice,’’ said Mr. Weinstein, who had one of her friends in on the plan.
He skated over to Ms. Ball and took her hand. They did a lap around the rink before he got down on one knee.
On March 16, they emailed guests with their decision to change their wedding plans in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
“We hope this is the hardest thing we have to do in our long, long marriage,’’ was the gist of the letter. A Jewish ceremony will be scheduled later this year.
“We’ll have a lot of dates to celebrate,” she said.
They ended the first ceremony with bagels from nearby Ess-a-Bagel, and then the couple rode their bicycles uptown to their home in the Murray Hill area.
