Boston Couple Play in the Snow Following Blizzard Wedding (Exclusive)

Drew Baker and Maddie McNamara weren’t going to let a blizzard stand in the way of their big day.

The couple, both 27, were set to wed at the Boston Public Library before heading to dinner to celebrate with their guests at a restaurant in Beacon Hill when Boston was hit by a major storm on Monday, Feb. 23. When it became clear their original plans were no longer feasible, Baker and McNamara decided to pivot — and ended up with an unforgettable wedding story in the process.

“We ended up just deciding that we wanted to get married on the day we planned to get married on,” the couple tells PEOPLE. “In our heads that was going to be our wedding day and despite all the challenges that arose with the weather, we still wanted to marry each other on that day.”

They continue, “We thought with all the challenges of the storm, to cap the day off by celebrating our wedding day in a massive blizzard would make for a funny story for us to look back on someday. We didn’t want to let anything get in the way of ruining our big day.”

Baker and McNamera tied the knot in their suite at the Newbury Hotel with only their officiant, his fiancée and their wedding photographer, Chris Graham, present. Then the couple headed outside into the winter wonderland, where Graham captured the magical moment the newlyweds decided to play in the snow while dressed in full formal wear.

“When they told me they were going to jump in the snow, I thought, ‘Yes, these are my people!’ ” the photographer recalls to PEOPLE. “Then, as we were heading outside, it slowly dawned on me that they weren’t wearing any snow pants or boots or jackets… nothing. Thinking they forgot to get changed, I said, ‘Wait, you’re not going in the snow wearing just that, right?’ And Maddie responded something along the lines of, ‘Hell yes!’ ”

The pictures taken by Graham speak for themselves. Baker and McNamera are seen lying side-by-side in the snow in one photo, and grinning as they run through the empty street in another. Their joy is palpable, and McNamara confirms that she wasn’t even worried about ruining her gown.

She shares, “I thought it would get more ruined than it did. I had fully bought into the experience and wanted to lean fully in!”

For the couple, the blizzard ended up making their wedding day all the more special in the end. “The city was so quiet, it felt like we had the entire area to ourselves on such a special day,” they tell PEOPLE via email. “It felt like it was such a unique experience to be able to experience a storm like that while dressed up for our wedding.”

As for their photographer, Graham knew he was capturing something unique. “I wanted to interfere as little as possible, let Maddie and Drew go where they wanted, do what they wanted, be themselves without my influence,” he says.

“I always prefer to work this way. When a couple does their own thing and doesn’t follow a photographer’s guidance, they can look back at their photos and recognize their true selves and their personalities,” he continues, explaining that “with Maddie and Drew, I showed up to their hotel room and they embraced me as a friend, as just another person there to celebrate and have fun with them, and I knew the best thing I could do for them was to match their energy and let them be themselves.”

He adds, “There is nothing more fun for me than taking pictures of couples, especially brides, having the time of their life, so I was just so pumped for this. I could’ve stayed outside shooting them for hours (but then I wasn’t the one whose clothes were soaked from making snow angels in formal wear).”

Baker and McNamara’s blizzard elopement seems fitting for a couple who seemed to almost be brought together by fate. The groom notes they’re both from Sudbury, Mass., and their families first met back in 2006 when they adopted puppies from the same litter. They then officially met in middle school where they briefly dated in the eighth grade, even attending their middle school dance together.

The two remained friends throughout high school and college, where they “rekindled” their romance and began dating before moving to Boston in 2021. “I proposed to Maddie in December of 2024 at the pier in Seaport, a spot where we used to bring take out to and eat by the water,” Baker says.

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For Graham, Baker and McNamara’s big day stands out as “easily my most unorthodox photo shoot.” He adds, “From the last-minute change of plans, to the couple being so cool and downright excited about that change, to the snowball fights in formal attire during a historic blizzard? I hope this can be beat, but I don’t think it will be for a long time.”

But he notes “what’s really cool” is how the day will stay in not only his and the couple’s memory, but in the memories of the people who saw the joyful newlyweds sharing a moment in the snow.

“This won’t just be in Maddie’s, Drew’s and my memory forever, but all the people who saw them out there and got to feel their joy,” Graham says. “Those strangers will never forget what they saw. This couple really put on a show for everyone.”