‘This wasn’t on my Pinterest mood board’: NYC weddings overlap with potential Knicks clinch

By Hannah Keyser, CNN

(CNN) — One time, before she met her now fiancé, Victoria Perry went on a first date with a man who said he wasn’t into the NBA.

“I was not going on a second date,” she says now.

And just think if she had – and they had hit it off – she could be marrying a man this weekend who didn’t want his wedding to turn into a New York Knicks-themed watch party for Game 5 of the NBA Finals. That would have been a real predicament. A potential clinch on the night of her nuptials?

“I’m ecstatic about it,” she told CNN Sports.

“It’s like a dream come true,” says James Kostadaras, the man who was enough of a fan for her.

For their first date three years ago, they watched the Finals game between the Miami Heat and the Denver Nuggets and quickly bonded over their Knicks fandom. Both are born and raised in New York City – she in Manhattan, he in Astoria, Queens. When it comes to supporting the Knicks, he’s the cynic and she’s the optimist.

But even Perry didn’t think, back in November when they scheduled their wedding for June 13 in Manhattan, that the Knicks would be playing that night with the possibility of winning their first championship since long before either of them were born.

“I thought maybe it would end in, like, beginning of June,” Perry said of the Knicks’ playoff run. “I’m very excited that it’s gotten past that.”

The couple started to consider the possible confluence when the Knicks swept the Sixers in the Eastern Conference semifinals and Perry set about arranging for 250 guests – the vast majority of which are from the city – to watch the second half together. She tasked her florist with sourcing Knicks paraphernalia.

“So he’s basically repurposing my $40,000 florals from cocktail hour and a reception and converting it into a Knicks-themed afterparty downstairs,” she said.

The plan is to go down for the second half of the game, which tips off at 8:30 p.m. ET in San Antonio.

She added, “We have confetti, we have pom poms, we have a DJ, we have sports bar food.”

There will be custom Wilson basketballs that have their names and anniversary on one side and “Knicks Finals 2026” on the other. And, of course, a giant television.

To Perry, it’s serendipity.

“I’ve never thought about my flowers once in my life, and I literally bought the first dress I tried on. Now, I’m grateful for these things, but I never dreamed of them growing up,” she says. “But I dream about the Knicks. So for me, it’s just a bigger source of my excitement.”

‘Make history on my wedding night’

Even though they’re Knicks fans – he by birth, she after abandoning her Nets fandom – Alexandra Cruz and Liam Allen didn’t realize what might happen to their June 13 wedding until the rehearsal dinner before a friend’s wedding last Friday night. They left the venue and went to a bar to watch the end of Game 2.

“And it was like, OK, this could go into our wedding weekend for sure,” Cruz said.

The Knicks won that game to go up 2-0 on the road. They returned home to New York, where they dropped the first game at Madison Square Garden and looked like they were going to lose again Wednesday night – which would have necessitated a Game 6 next Tuesday – until the Knicks completed a historic comeback in the final seconds.

The following morning, Cruz noticed all her Tri-state area friends and family posting about “Knicks in five.” She posted on social media wondering whether to get a TV for the wedding and the overwhelming response was something along the lines of: Haha, yeah. For real, though.

“This wasn’t on my Pinterest mood board,” Cruz jokes. “The blue-and-orange aesthetic was not part of my theme.”

But she realized that if she didn’t embrace the overlap, she’d be faced with a reception full of fans clandestinely checking scores or gathering around phones.

“That takes them away from the party,” she says, “so I need to lean into it and make it part of our party.”

That doesn’t mean she’s giving out blue-and-orange beads or bringing in balloons – “it is a tough color scheme” – but she has arranged for a projector at the venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to show the game and deputized one of the groomsmen to oversee the technology.

And she is rooting for them to clinch, even if it means everyone will be a little distracted from dancing.

“Of course, like, make history on my wedding night,” she says. “It’ll make it that much more special and memorable.”

For Perry, whose Knicks-obsessed father passed away when she was two years old, it would be especially meaningful. Her mom tells her that when she watches the Knicks games, Perry’s mannerisms are reminiscent of her father.

“Maybe I’m just telling myself this, but I feel like he made a special request for his daughter to have this,” she says of the Knicks potentially clinching on her wedding day. “Like, to distract me from the fact that he won’t be there for the father-daughter dance or walking me down (the aisle).”

And like any true Knicks fan, she and her fiancé understand that, while the wedding is just a highlight reel, true love is about the long haul.

“I think that’s like the ultimate litmus test, whether or not someone has stayed with the Knicks through all these years,” Kostadaras says. “It’s like, all right, you have loyalty in you.”

“Everything I learned about love and loyalty and marriage prep was through the Knicks all these years,” his soon-to-be-wife agrees.

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