July 29, 2026
Courtenay Harris Bond/Philly Voice
Ye Wang and Karen Perez Sarmiento exchange vows Wednesday in LOVE Park, where nearly 1,000 weddings have been held since 2018.
When Susan Harte officiates marriage ceremonies at LOVE Park on Wedding Wednesdays, she challenges family, friends and anyone who passes through to find a more perfect place for a couple to publicly affirm their love "than right here, in the middle of the city of love, under the shadow of love."
For eight years, the non-denominational officiant with Journeys of the Heart has been saying those words most Wednesdays from March through November. The public ceremonies started as a promotional activity for LOVE Park when it reopened in 2018 after a $26 million renovation. The weddings were so popular, they ultimately became a weekly fixture. This fall, the park is expected to host its 1,000th wedding.
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"You're basically inviting the whole city to your wedding if you decide to get married here," said Heather McBride (her real name), a wedding photographer who shoots lots of ceremonies at LOVE Park.
Couples register through the city and pay $250 for half-hour time blocks. The ceremonies are officiated by Journeys of the Heart, which has a contract with the city, or by other officials or religious leaders of the couple's choosing.
Up to 100 people may attend the festivities — a limit that a park official said was set several years ago after a pair of teachers who got married brought their entire classes and a total of about 300 people attended the event.
Often, people seeking small civil ceremonies at City Hall find out about the LOVE Park option on the website, Harte said.
Ye Wang and Karen Perez Sarmiento walk through the gardens at LOVE Park on Wednesday before exchanging their vows.
That's how Ye Wang and Karen Perez Sarmiento discovered they could get married under the LOVE statue.
For the couple's 1 p.m. ceremony Wednesday, Sarmiento wore a traditional Mexican wedding dress, with bright blue, yellow, orange and pink flowers embroidered down the neck, that she had shipped from the state of Puebla, which is located about an hour east of Mexico City. She clutched a bouquet of gerbera daisies in vivid yellow, pink and red. Wang wore a traditional Chinese maroon silk wedding jacket.
"So it has thousands of years of history," he said.
Wang, an electrical engineer, and Sarmiento, who just earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania – having defended her dissertation two weeks ago – brought their families in China, Australia and Mexico to the wedding via Zoom.
"We are really happy," Wang said, staring down at Sarmiento, smiling.
Right before the wedding began, a man with a microphone hooked to a boom box stood under the LOVE sculpture rapping. Day camp kids in orange T-shirts ran screaming through the lush grass and along the trails in the gardens tended by the Philadelphia Horticulture Society in conjunction with the city's Parks & Recreation Department. Several people passing by stopped to film the marriage with their phones.
"We're so happy for you," a woman standing with a young girl screamed.
Sarmiento looked like she was crying as Wang read his vows.
"It was perfect, just how I thought it would be," she said after the ceremony.
Andrew Emma, manager of LOVE Park, Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Rail Park, called Wedding Wednesdays "a very Philly thing to do."
"That is what Philly is about," he said. "We're the people that are going to be like, 'Oh! Happy marriage! Congratulations!' and yell and interrupt stuff. I think it's fun to lean into that. The people that get married here, I think they understand that the cacophony of the city is 99% positive. It's just kind of that normal noise. It's not mean or angry or negative. It's just human."
