Company Culture
COVID-19 / Events

How these Philly technologists pulled off a flash Zoom wedding in a pandemic

Guru's Rick Nucci officiated.

Jordan Price and Steve Mayernick get married. (Photo by Lexi Pierce)

When Fishtown-based couple Jordan Price and Steve Mayernick made the decision this spring to push back their May 9, 2020 wedding to next year because of the coronavirus pandemic, they didn’t yet know they’d still be getting hitched this year.

They’d been able to get their same venue and vendors for a similar date next year, and had began telling telling loved ones about the date change, they told Technical.ly.

“But I started thinking, ‘Well if we did want to get married, how would we even do that?” said Price, a project manager at Thomas Jefferson University.

She started poking around online in the weeks leading up to their would-be big day, wondering if — just if — they in fact would want to track down a marriage license, how they’d go about it.

She researched different counties in the area, but most wouldn’t grant a license for anyone that wasn’t a resident or under a strict timeline, like for a visa. But finally, in late April, the Bucks County Register of Wills said it would grant them the document virtually.

So, they had a license in hand, and decided yes, they’d get legally married May 1, the date of their pushed-back celebration in 2021. That left about eight days to figure out what to wear, where to swap vows, who would bear witness, and oh yeah — who would be able to perform the ceremony.

Enter: Guru CEO Rick Nucci.

Mayernick, head of product marketing at Guru, said his mentor had long joked that he’d be down to marry the couple.

“He would always joke that he was ordained, that he’d done a wedding before,” Mayernick said.

So the couple took him up on it.

Steve Mayernick, Rick Nucci and Jordan Price. (Photo by Lexi Pierce)

They then tracked down some attire — hers from David’s Bridal, his from menswear startup Moda Matters — and told a handful of people that they’d be tying the knot in a flash wedding ceremony on Friday, May 1, in Palmer Park.

That day, the couple then sent out a message to their entire guest list that that, surprise, they were in fact getting married that day. Outside of some immediate family and close friends who were able to make it for the socially distant ceremony, everyone would be attending on Zoom.

Price asked a good friend who had helped with the proposal a year earlier to livestream and record the ceremony (and mute people if they were getting a little too chatty). Though unconventional, having the ceremony recorded on Zoom is now one of the couple’s favorite things from the day.

“She started the Zoom recording a little bit before we even got there,” Price said. “So she recorded these interactions, between our guests that, at a normal wedding, would have happened. You know? Guests catching up and mingling with each other. And at the end, you could hear cheering coming from the iPad.”

Over the course of the 25-minute ceremony, 49 accounts and about 90 guests watched on, many dressed up or drinking some champagne to commemorate the occasion. And now the couple can watch back and see the reactions from their friends and family any time they’d like.

“If that were a real wedding, we would have been busy, we surely would have missed all that,” Mayernick said.

Screenshot of Price and Mayernick’s Zoom wedding (Courtesy image)

Nucci told Technical.ly that he was honored when the couple asked him if his joking offer still stood. Initially, it was an interesting mix of emotions, seeing friends and family spaced out, wearing masks, he said.

“As we were hanging out in the park waiting for them, they rounded the corner in full wedding attire, and I had this huge respect for their perseverance,” Nucci said. “The vibe immediately changed and everyone was happy and excited.”

One of the most surreal parts of the day was walking through the couple’s neighborhood, dressed up in their wedding attire, they said. On May 1, the city was still on a stay-at-home order, and the streets were empty.

“But total strangers were stopping or poking their heads out of their houses to tell us congratulations,” Mayernick said.

“People were looking for any and all good news,” Price added.

Companies: Guru Technologies
Series: Coronavirus
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