Wedding Dreams Deferred

Posted by Marielle in Weddings.

Above all, I had wanted to keep it simple. No, that’s a lie. If I had wanted a relaxed, effortless wedding, I would not have strived so hard to be unique. I never thought I would have to give up one to achieve the other.

In 2005 and again in May, I watched both my older sisters get married at the same hotel, with the same traditional series of events, and most of the same guests. I knew that if my parents had their way, they’d be giving me away at that hotel, too, in a tried and true template ceremony created by my mother when her first daughter stepped up to the nuptial plate at the tender age of 26.

Even though the details of each wedding really set them far apart (Fall vs. Spring, Band vs. DJ, indoor ceremony vs. outdoor, red vs. green theme colors), I became certain that I could never get married at that or any other hotel. Furthermore, I’d have to change the structure and meaning of my wedding, banning capitalism and reminding my guests about the true meaning of weddings.

This turned out to be a hallucination.

First, there was our wedding in the woods idea. Besides Girl Scouts, the first time I ever really went camping was with Bill and his family. This became a summer tradition for Bill and I, sometimes pitching a romantic two-person tent for a weekend getaway, and sometimes bringing a cavalcade of friends to share in the fun. At some point over the course of this year, we decided that a sylvan wedding would be romantic and meaningful, especially a Jewish wedding in September, which is when the Jews restart the book of Genesis. We’d be surrounded in nature at a very earth and garden-themed time of the year and, much like a tent, we’d be standing under the chuppah together, a symbol of the home we will share. All the logistics were figured out — guests could rent cabins or bring tents, or even stay in a local hotel if they were camping-phobic. I’d hook up my macbook with some speakers and ask a friend to DJ. A few professional chef friends even volunteered to cook.

It was an amazing idea that my parents even begrudgingly caved on — until Bill, some friends, and I spent a weekend camping to work out the logistics. The mile-long hike the the lighthouse overlooking the cliff would have been fine for me and my friends. But there’s no way my 80 year-old grandmother is trekking that mountain. And I need her to be there when Bill and I exchange vows. Add on the decrepit state of their much-advertised reception pavilion and it became quite clear that a wedding in the woods just wasn’t what our fantasies had bargained for.

Then there was the Abington Art Center, a spacious and funky sculpture park with an elegant indoor space we could use in inclement weather. It really felt like us — our romance actually began to bloom on a weekend trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and since they don’t do weddings, this was as close as we could get. It had art, nature, and an elegance that wouldn’t eternally embarrass my parents.

The problem was kosher catering, a factor that we struggled with all summer while looking for venues. Most Philly-area wedding locations have exclusive contracts with select catering companies. Rarely are these caterers kosher-certified, something that is important not only to Bill and I, but to his parents as well. Not only are they hard to find, but when a caterer could subcontract to a kosher caterer, the price was almost twice as high.

So we gave up on Abington, which we had latched onto the way an abandoned kitten seizes the arm that bottle-feeds.

For the rest of the summer and most of this Fall, we searched and searched for venues without exclusive contracts, or whose contracts included kosher options.

We finally found a place, through a neighbor, a few weeks ago. It’s a Revolutionary War-era farmhouse called The Duportail House. It’s located about 15 minutes from my parents’ house near a shopping center we visit at least once a week, and none of us even knew it existed. We toured it and were enchanted by the crumbling stones, the crows, and the expansive but private property. They have no contracts and because they only do about 30 events a year, their kitchen is in prime condition to be koshered for our wedding. We might have even found an affordable but tasteful kosher caterer (I’ll know after Thanksgiving).

The venue is not a hotel, but it’s not the woods, either. We’ve reshaped our dream location to accommodate for reality, but I wonder what that means for our other anti-establishment goals. Is this the first slide down that slippery slope to a cookie-cutter wedding? And if so, is that completely despicable?

Weddings |