‘You guys are crazy’: Meet the couple who got married in an Eagles tailgate ceremony

Before Monica Vasquez met her husband, Jeff, she wasn’t an Eagles fan at all. The Brooklyn native didn’t really follow sports — until she matched with Jeff on Facebook Dating in 2022. Two years later, Monica was walking down the aisle in Lot P, surrounded by friends, family, and hundreds of Eagles fans in a viral wedding outside Lincoln Financial Field.

Jeff Vasquez, on the other hand, is a lifelong Eagles fan. His grandmother worked for West Chester University, where the Eagles used to host training camp. Every summer, Vasquez, who is from West Chester, would head down to the campus and watch the Birds with his grandmother, and he’s been a diehard fan ever since.

He and his friends hosted huge tailgates in the parking lots, but he’d never brought a girlfriend. Until Monica, who quickly fell in love with the team through the passion and camaraderie of the tailgate scene.

“She was the only woman that’s ever been to a tailgate as like a date, or something like that, because it was always a guy thing for me,” Jeff told The Inquirer. “I always just wanted to be with the guys, have fun with the guys. She came into my life, and she’s been to every one with me since we’ve been together.”

“I feel like the Eagles made it easy for me to win over her love.”

The two have taken road trips to MetLife Stadium and to Northwest Stadium, home of the Commanders, to watch the Birds play. Jeff even tricked out their basement as an Eagles-themed man cave.

“[Monica] understands me,” Jeff said. “I feel like the Eagles made it easy for me to win over her love. There’s certain things like passion, my loyalty to the Eagles, things that she’s seen from Day 1. I feel like it made her love me even more. The amount of time that we spend together on Eagles things, it’s like date nights. We consider a tailgate a date day.”

Once the couple got engaged, they knew they didn’t want a traditional church wedding.

Monica pitched a year ago that they get married in the lots, something that had helped bring them together and was a special part of their lives — and she knew it would help Jeff be invested in the planning process.

But Monica’s family, who aren’t Eagles fans, were very confused.

“People didn’t believe us,” Monica said. “They were like, ‘You guys are crazy. You want to have a parking lot wedding?’ They thought it was cheesy at first. We got all types of mixed reviews. Some people were like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a cool idea.’ Some of them were like, ‘How are you guys gonna pull this off?’”

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Despite the unique venue, the Vasquezes still wanted to make their Oct. 13 nuptials look somewhat like a traditional wedding, with an altar and an aisle. That meant they’d need to block off a large number of parking spots to guarantee they’d have enough room for all 70 of their planned guests. Jeff “lost sleep for the last year” making sure their dream wedding in Lot P went down without a hitch.

It almost didn’t.

“We had a couple encounters with security,” Jeff said. “The morning of [the wedding], they wanted us to shut down. I begged and pleaded with them, and thank God they gave us until 1 p.m. to have that part of the area cleaned up. So they allowed us to have the wedding — thank God for the security — but for a second there, we were worried that it wasn’t going to happen.”

One of Jeff’s closest friends, Miguel Garcia, was ordained for the ceremony and officiated the wedding — wearing a kelly green suit, of course. Jeff directed one of his other groomsmen to act like he’d forgotten something on his way down the aisle, before turning back to grab a large Swoop head. Another one of his friends sported an Eagles beer helmet.

In addition to the 70 people the couple invited, hundreds of fans in the parking lot saw what was happening and joined the festivities, and the couple opened up the food and the ceremony to everyone who wanted to support. Their spread was pretty typical for a Vasquez tailgate, Jeff said, including Puerto Rican classics like rice and beans, stewed chicken, and typical tailgate fare like hot dogs and burgers. They also had an Eagles-themed wedding cake.

That crowd of fans included Matt Talbot, coincidentally a wedding videographer, who captured a few photos on his phone and posted them to social media, where they quickly went viral. Talbot even heard from the Eagles, and the Vazquezes are hoping to connect with the team.

Their yearlong plan was a success beyond their wildest expectations.

“My daughter told me yesterday, she goes, ‘Mom, when you guys were talking about it, I didn’t believe it, but it was so much fun,’” Monica said. “‘You guys didn’t make it like a church wedding, where you couldn’t talk. It was an all-out party.’

“There were the [quieter] moments where we were exchanging our vows, but it was so much fun. Everybody had an amazing time. People might criticize it, but we had fun. People that had never been tailgating before now want to go tailgating. They told Jeff, we’re gonna start crashing your tailgates.”

The Eagles play in Week 7 against the New York Giants. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from MetLife Stadium.