Priscilla Cader Villalobos and Timothy Robert Kolk had plans to wed at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau on Feb. 23. But Mother Nature had other ideas.
After a blizzard warning had been issued for the city, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that city offices, public libraries and courthouses would be closed for in-person services on Feb. 23. The couple’s three guests had already flown into town for the wedding, and the marriage bureau did not have availability to reschedule until after the guests were to leave.
Ms. Villalobos and Mr. Kolk decided they would get married anyway. They just needed to find someone who was legally authorized to perform a wedding ceremony in the state of New York.
Ms. Villalobos shared a message in a neighborhood WhatsApp group for parents in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where the couple lives. Somebody in that group saw the message and copied and pasted it to a knitting group on the same platform.
Then, somebody in that group saw it and messaged Kris Liakos, a fellow Brooklyn resident who had been ordained by the Universal Life Church. Mr. Liakos asked who the wedding was for. The response: “I don’t know, but I gave them your number.” He agreed to do it.
The couple showed up to McGolrick Park in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Feb. 24 to meet a stranger who would marry them the day after a snowstorm pummeled the city.
“I don’t know if it’s a she Kris, he Kris, they Kris,” Ms. Villalobos recalled thinking. But whoever they were, this person “gave me some really good vibes from the texts.”
And, once they met, they got along in person, too. After the ceremony, the couple, their guests and their officiant shared a pint of beer at the Palace, a bar across from the park.
It was “a very sweet and very New York City convergence,” said Mr. Liakos in his speech.
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Ms. Villalobos and Mr. Kolk had met in 2018 at a New York-based stone and tile company where they worked as staff photographers. Almost every day, the two shot projects together in and around the city, and they would often grab a meal and hang out afterward.
“We were just drawn to each other’s talent and creativity,” Ms. Villalobos said. But it wasn’t until the Covid-19 pandemic that they understood their feelings for each other.
“We have a pretty steep age gap, and so it was a lot to wrap my head around,” she said. “It was during Covid that I was like, ‘No, this is really serious and life is so short.’”
Ms. Villalobos, 30, grew up in Santa Ana, El Salvador. Mr. Kolk, 60, grew up in Chicago and graduated from DePaul University in Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in American Studies. She shared stories about her work as a photojournalist in San Salvador. He told her stories about his career as an interior photographer.
“There’s something completely different about her worldview,” Mr. Kolk said, and he enjoyed learning about her culture and perspective. Ms. Villalobos added that his view of the world, having worked for publications like Architectural Digest and Elle Decor, enlightened her as well.
The two moved in together in October 2020. They still work together, but at a different tile company called the Tile Bar, where she is a creative director and he is a director of video production. “She’s my boss,” Mr. Kolk said, jokingly. (Technically, he does not report directly to Ms. Villalobos.)
“We probably would not have met each other on a dating app,” Ms. Villalobos said. “We did not disclose our ages until way after. For the longest time, I thought he was much younger, and he thought I was much older.” By the time they shared their ages, they already had feelings for each other.
In March 2024, Mr. Kolk packed champagne, cheese and grapes, and they picnicked at Gantry Plaza State Park in Queens. Off in the distance, an eight-piece mariachi band materialized, walked toward them, and he proposed. Ms. Villalobos had dreamed of getting serenaded by a mariachi band — “a coming of age thing” for many Salvadorans, she said. But she thought it would never happen to her in New York.
“And then, of course, anything happens in New York,” she said.
On Nov. 29, the couple held a wedding celebration in Quinta Pino Alto, a venue just outside of San Salvador, with 70 guests and some giant papier-mâché dolls in traditional dresses.
On Feb. 24, the day the couple were legally married in Brooklyn, they went to work as if it were a regular day. They then picked up their 2-year-old son, Pascal, from day care, changed into white and black outfits, took an Uber to the park, and met up with Mr. Liakos and his friend, Brianna DiGioia, a photographer who offered to shoot the ceremony for free because she loved their story.
The couple were married in the early evening at an archway at the center of the park, while people walked their dogs in the background.
Sadiba Hasan reports on love and culture for the Styles section of The Times.
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