Meet the mum who makes dreams come true in New York - from suburban Solihull

She's the mum who has taken a bite out of the Big Apple - by arranging dream New York weddings from thousands of miles away in the Midlands. Claire Ady, 46, runs 'Wed in Central Park' offering couples 'best budget' options for getting married in iconic Central Park.

The 3,000-mile distance between NYC and her Solihull home has not proved a problem as she works from the comfort of her dining room table and uses a reliable team of on-the-ground staff. Claire, originally from Stoke-on-Trent, married in the park herself in 2011 when she lived in New York, before moving to Las Vegas and California and then returning to the UK to raise her two sons.

"We planned our own wedding through word-of-mouth, I thought this was a good way to help Brits and foreigners to do the same thing. After reading a book about how to make my own website I had my first client and I went from there," Claire told BirminghamLive.

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Claire has planned 650 weddings, catering from 575 to 3550 dollar budget packages, since launching her business in 2012. Couples can tie the knot against the iconic New York skyline, home to hit TV shows like Friends, Sex and the City and Gossip Girl.

She said: "In the first year I did about 15 weddings, after that it ramped up. The best year was 2022, I did 82 weddings after Covid. I go to New York for one week a year and I attend some weddings to check everything is going well."

Claire has helped people from across the world tie the knot, including couples from Birmingham and Coventry, Scotland and Ireland. She said: "In 2011 I moved to New York with my boyfriend at the time and he had a working visa. So we had to get married if I was going to continue to live with him. We were married in Central Park.

"We lived in New York for a year, then Las Vegas and then California. My first son was born in Vegas, my second son was born in the UK. We wanted to raise them here in Solihull. We knew the area here, the schools are nice, it is good for kids."

Claire said her clients were often eloping or wanted to do things on their own terms after the stress of planning a big traditional event. She works part-time but checks her emails daily, co-ordinating the ceremonies from Solihull. "I work around the children and I feel like I have enough business," she said.

"The people I provide on the day are really reliable. Initially I used my own wedding vendors, I will have photographers come and go all the time. My clients don't even know where I am!"

Claire said she had received "100 percent five star reviews" since she started, with her Instagram and Facebook feeds showing hundreds of happy couples. She said: "A big part of my job is managing expectations and getting them through their decisions. People come to me to save money - they are getting their wedding and honeymoon in one go.

"They would focus on each other than spend that money on dinners for an extended family. People come to me to say they want to get rid of the stress.

"I cry at all of them, the most emotional are the elopements. People say things to each other they would not say in front of other family. It is so much easier to get married in the US than the UK. If you want to get married in New York you pick up a license, you wait 24 hours, you sign it in the ceremony and the ceremony must be done by a New York State officiant.

"I write the ceremony, the licence is sent, it goes back to the licence office, they register your marriage and they send your certificate to you."

On her salary, Claire said: "I suspect my competitors make more than I do because they charge vastly more. It is calculated with costs of the people who will be there on the day and an estimate of how much of my time it’s likely to take to plan each wedding, depending on what the couples need me to do for them.

"I made more when I had a salaried job but I make enough. I do this from my dining room in my pyjamas. I love New York, I like helping people, I love planning and thinking about the details, asking people what they want and making them happy."