People planning weddings - or people wondering why they've seen so many weddings outside lately: Theres a nice article about the trend towards weddings in parks and other public spaces in the city in today's NY Times Style section. With parks - complete with dazzling views - getting cleaner and safer, couples are getting married in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn and Gantry Plaza in Queens. The most important thing to investigate is the kind of permit or permits you may need (depending on the size of your party, whether you have music, chairs, photographers with tripods, etc.). Here's the Parks Department FAQ about events, including weddings in parks. If you're not having a complicated affair (small, no music, no chairs), it's just a $25 permit.

But here's a cool revelation: Metro-North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders says that couple can get married in the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal if it's "an ad hoc casual thing...They can’t set up chairs. They can’t have flowers.” Or photographers with tripods.

And here's a looking at this week's NY Times Weddings & Celebrations:

• There are 34 announcements, including two gay civil unions, and the Vows column
  
• There are 19 photographs of couples
  
• The youngest bride is 25, the oldest bride is 70.
  
• The youngest groom is 25, the oldest groom is 79.
  
• One bride is a lawyer at the Bank of New York and "specializes in compliance with the Patriot Act."
  
• One bride is the executive director of government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics; her groom works for a military contractor and was previously "the senior intelligence analyst for the multinational forces in Iraq."
  
• The editor-in-chief of BlackBook married a woman he met at Hudson Bar & Books.
  
• One groom works in corporate development for the NY Times; his grandfather also received the Nobel Prize for physics - twice.
  
• One groom is an architectural designer for the Parks Department.
  
• One couple first met when the bride took the groom, then a college senior, for dinner, when he was interviewing at a job at her company. He was hired and they did see each other at work from time to time for two years, until she went to graduate school and he was transferred. And then: "Six years later, they found themselves at the wedding of a former colleague."
  
• And one couple first met back in 1970, at a fraternity party. They broke up after college, but in 2004, the bride got a call from their college alumni association - her ex (and future groom) was trying to find her.

Photograph of Grand Central Terminal by colinpoe on Flickr