Selena Evelyn Coppock has been reading The New York Times Weddings section since she was about 12. “It all seemed so exciting and glamorous to a girl growing up outside of Boston,” Ms. Coppock said.
After moving to New York in 2006, her fascination with the Vows section and the couples featured in it each week, only grew. In May 2015, she created a Twitter, now X, account @NYTvows to poke fun at the stories, going by the name “The Fake Grey Lady,” a reference to a former nickname for the newspaper. A year later, she expanded to Instagram, where she has nearly 29,000 followers.
“I could just hear the voice of this section in my head, and it cracked me up,” Ms. Coppock said. “The constant name-drops of Ivy League schools, elite country clubs, and Mayflower descendants. I pictured an Upper East Side grande dame as the voice of the section.”
“I actually performed the character live in a show one time,” said Ms. Coppock, who formerly did stand-up comedy in New York. “I mostly berated the audience for being ‘middle -class nobodies.’”
But she admitted that her best joke ever might be the one about how she met Aaron William Allietta. “How do you meet a man in NYC? Just hang out at the same bar for 13 years, and, eventually, he’ll walk in,” she said.
It’s funny because it’s true.
On Dec. 28, 2019, Ms. Coppock met Mr. Allietta at Shade Bar in Greenwich Village. She had been going there regularly for 13 years. “Aaron had been going there for three years because he worked nearby at Minetta Tavern,” Ms. Coppock said. “I thought I knew all the regulars. But he and I just didn’t have the same timing.”
They didn’t exchange phone numbers that night. Mr. Allietta witnessed a trumpet player trying to get Ms. Coppock’s number and failing. He decided against making a move of his own. “We just sort of acknowledged one another,” Mr. Allietta said. “The next night I went and hoped she’d be there.”
Ms. Coppock returned the following night, also hoping that she would see Mr. Allietta again.
“And he was there,” she said. That night, Dec. 29, 2019, they had their first kiss. And a few days later, they went on their first date.
On Jan. 3, 2020, Ms. Coppock was performing in a comedy show she co-produced at the Peoples Improv Theater, a.k.a. the PIT, but she asked Mr. Allietta not to attend. She wanted him to get to know her first. “I played in bands for years,” Mr. Allietta said. “From the performance aspect, I totally got it.”
Instead, after Ms. Coppock’s set, they met for dinner at the now-closed Simon & the Whale in the Freehand hotel in Flatiron, which was near where Ms. Coppock was performing. Afterward, they went to Mr. Allietta’s apartment to watch John Mulaney’s comedy special “The Sack Lunch Bunch.”
By late January, Mr. Allietta was attending Ms. Coppock’s shows, and Ms. Coppock began performing jokes she wrote about their new romance. Luckily, Ms. Coppock said, “He loved it.”
A few months later, during the pandemic, the city was locked down. Ms. Coppock began a fun weekly tradition.
“Every Friday evening, I’d do full hair and makeup and put on a vintage dress, take a photo, stop by my local wine store, and then go to Aaron’s apartment, where I would spend the whole weekend,” said Ms. Coppock, who has a collection of vintage dresses from the 1970s.
“So, two Fridays in a row, I arrived at his door all done up,” Ms. Coppock said. “The third Friday I arrived there, Aaron answered the door dressed up in a suit. I remember thinking, ‘Oh man. This guy is the real deal.’”
By April, they had made their relationship Instagram official. On April 4, 2020, she posted a photo of herself and Aaron with the caption, “A great way to kick-start a relationship is by quarantining together during a pandemic.” It was the first time she had shared his photo and an update like that with her followers on her personal account. “It felt like, OK, I’m putting my heart out there, but I have a lot of faith in this love,” Ms. Coppock said.
The couple got an apartment in the South Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, in February 2021. “Aaron did a ton of the apartment hunting and connecting with Realtors,” Ms. Coppock said, “which really impressed me.”
In addition to running @NYTvows, Ms. Coppock, 44, is the director of editorial at The Princeton Review and a host of Betches Brides, a wedding podcast. She has a bachelor’s in English literature from Hamilton College and grew up in Weston, Mass.
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Mr. Allietta, 47, is a bartender at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. He previously played the keyboard in a number of bands in Chicago and New York. He attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and grew up in Naperville, Ill. Mr. Allietta’s previous marriage ended in divorce.
After four years of being together, Ms. Coppock’s once cynical view of marriage began to soften. “I wanted partnership but thought the official marriage license was superfluous,” she said. “Then, as I watched so many of my friends marry, it struck me that weddings are such an important gathering of loved ones, and marriage can be a wonderful, public proclamation of love. So when I met Aaron, I was open to the idea.”
On Dec. 8, 2023, Mr. Allietta proposed to Ms. Coppock. “We knew we were going to get married. I happened to be walking by this vintage shop in Brooklyn,” Mr. Allietta said. “I saw they have this really cool jewelry section. I mentioned it to Selena and said we might be able to find a cool engagement ring there.”
He suggested a visit on a Friday afternoon, “I was like, ‘Oh, today’s the day,’” Ms. Coppock said. She was right.
They ended up buying two rings. But, Mr. Allietta said, “One quickly became the go-to.” It was made of two large loops of pave crystals wound together.
After leaving the shop, “We go to Jersey Mike’s because we love their deli sandwiches,” Ms. Coppock said. “We go home and eat our subs. Then he came in and got down on one knee. And afterward, we had white wine in champagne flutes.”
The two were wed Aug. 3 at Society Cafe in the Walker Hotel Greenwich Village, “right near where we met at Shade Bar,” Ms. Coppock said.
Cameron McCabe, a chaplain at Mount Sinai West hospital and a friend of the couple’s, officiated, having gotten a one-day marriage officiant license via the City Clerk’s office. In attendance were 62 guests.
The couple both donned new rings, Mr. Allietta a plain, silver band and Ms. Coppock a gold band with an opal at the center and two small diamonds on either side. “I wear my gorgeous engagement ring on my right hand now. I love that ring so much,” she said.
The bride wore a feather-trimmed, strapless dress by Untamed Petals, purchased via Poshmark. “I got it for a song, as they say,” Ms. Coppock said. Mr. Allietta wore a tan suit with a striped tie.
The ceremony was followed by a cocktail hour, which featured passed hors d’oeuvres. Guests then took their assigned seats for a family-style dinner.
Instead of a traditional wedding cake, bite-size offerings of chocolate cake, carrot cake, and macarons were served.
“There were moments when I just looked around the dinner, took in the scene of everybody, and felt so lucky,” Mr. Allietta said.
“I kept pinching myself that I could bop around and see my sisters chatting with my cousins and comedy friends laughing with neighbor friends and Aaron’s family and my family bonding over dinner,” Ms. Coppock added.
The night ended with an after-party at Shade, the bar where the couple first met. “It was 12 pals plus me and Aaron,” Ms. Coppock said. “We got a round of applause when we walked in. I just feel so lucky that I hung around there for 13 years.”
Ms. Coppock may have made a name for herself by making fun of the Vows pages. But, “It always came from a place of reverence and fascination,” said Ms. Coppock, who admitted having her wedding featured felt like a dream. “Honestly, back in the old era of Vows, I never thought I would make the cut.”
On this Day
When Aug. 3, 2024
Where Society Cafe in Walker Hotel Greenwich Village, New York
Play Ball! “Aside from music, baseball is one of my favorite things,” Mr. Allietta said. “I am the first baseman for the Tavern on the Green softball team.” So, the night before the wedding, guests joined the couple for a Staten Island FerryHawks minor league game, where Mr. Allietta threw out the first pitch.
Melodious Melodies During the cocktail hour, the Joelle Lurie Band, the lead singer of which is an old friend of Ms. Coppock’s, performed selections from the Great American Songbook, as well as contemporary music marked by jazz arrangements, adding to the wedding’s nostalgic charm. “Joelle used to sing at Tavern on the Green with her jazz quartet,” Ms. Coppock said. “It’s so funny that Aaron works at Tavern now.”
Poetic Offering After the ceremony, Ms. Coppock’s mother, Susan Coppock, a poet, shared a poem she wrote for the occasion. It read, in part:
I picture you two
lip-syncing your songs,
swaying your dance steps,
enjoying your TA-DA moments.
To quote Manic Monday
Time it goes so fast.
So grab it!
Grab it together!
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