The Wedding Planner

When the State of New York announced that two consenting adults, no matter what their gender, could be joined together in a legal marriage, an immediate flurry of weddings were announced.

And how honored were Paul and I when our closest friends, Ilene and Karen, asked us to host their September wedding outdoors on our bluff overlooking Gardiner’s Bay. We toasted the future date with much champagne and hangovers to follow.

Never having marched down the aisle ourselves, nor fathered a bride, not having any sisters or a mother who had experienced producing a wedding, we were clueless as to what lay ahead for our friends—or for us for that matter. Since the brides were managing everything, we thought we would just be able to sit back, observe and let the bridal parade go by.

We’d given countless parties and fund-raisers ourselves, so it was bound to be a piece of cake, we thought. But if you are like me, (and I am a perfectionist) and rather “obsessively controlling,” as the wedding planner so delicately described me, you must have cases of Xanax on hand, stiff martinis and someone like Cher’s character in “Moonstruck” to slap you and shout, “snap out of it!”

We observed with admiration as Karen and Ilene effortlessly auditioned wedding planners, ushering the final contestants through our home.

Miss First-Runner-Up Wedding Planner seemed horrified at our small kitchen, lack of tent space and no parking. She found more problems than any of us could even conceive of.

But Miss-First-Place-Winner Wedding Planner saw only solutions, having produced “300 weddings every summer,” she said. Plus, she seemed more than capable and was hired on the spot.

Miss Wedding Planner met us at Bermuda Party Rentals in East Hampton where Karen, Ilene and I selected the china, glassware, flatware and the color theme. We chose a blue-and-purple theme because the napkins with grapes and grapevines on them reminded the brides of their beloved Tuscany. So Tuscan blue and purple it was.

That is when I realized that there are no blue and purple flowers blooming in early September, on the East End, only white mums and yellow sunflowers are available. Live and learn.

Another friend, in Bridgehampton, was marrying her daughter, also at her home, also outdoors and on the very same weekend, so we collaborated a bit. Unlike me, she was the mother of a bride who is a successful and upcoming fashionista.

The style demands on this M.O.B. were far beyond those of Karen and Ilene, who 25 years into their journey were now just enjoying the ride and grateful for everyone’s efforts.

When I asked my Bridgehampton friend how things were going, she almost exploded.

“How did we get here? No one tells you! It’s the worst experience of my life—no one is talking—it’s torn my family apart,” she opined. “My youngest daughter is so upset she promises she’ll never get married. I know it’s the Hamptons and New York, but the prices that keep coming in are astronomical. The first bid on the flowers was $38,000, the dance floor, $30,000, the tent $135,000—and that’s before the caterer!”

“And then there’s the makeup artist, at $300 per person with seven bridesmaids. Hmmm,” she continued. “It adds up: with the bossa nova band, the lighting designer, the photographer, and of course, you’ve got to have a video now that’s directed and cut like an Academy Award-winning film.”

Yes. It can add up.

As I allowed her to calm down, I asked, “Well, is it going to be pretty?”

Happily, she then described her daughter’s deconstructed princess dress with acres of tulle, how the tent will be washed with pink and amber romantic lanterns on an arbor, compotes filled with blush roses and an ancestral touch of using her family’s heirloom silver and china graced by poached branzino.

But then she launched into, “No one tells you this is a year-long project interfering in everyone’s lives. The anxiety is so prevalent that I forgot to count my own family—the six of us—as guests! Now I have to add them!”

But back to Karen and Ilene’s simple-by-the-sea affair in our backyard. I felt once again on level ground after listening to my traumatized friend.

Yes, I ripped out the overgrown bushes that swallowed up the path and planted it with grey artemisia, variegated iris, lavender and yellow asters to spice up the wedding aisle. Learn from my mistake: never, ever, call it a “bridal path,” which though spelled differently, apparently leads some to think of horses, not ladies. I pruned the espaliers, trimmed the hedges, seeded the grass, although I couldn’t water before the wedding because chairs and lady’s heels would have sunk in.

I cleaned the fountains, mopped the floors, primped the bedrooms until they were “showhouse ready,” and awaited new carpet to arrive for the living room. I also arranged 22 bouquets for all the rooms, stealing flowers from fallow fields and tardiva hydrangea from neighbors’ gardens, with their permission of course.

The mums I bought weren’t in bloom, so I stuffed mophead hydrangea from my garden under them to give them color. I raided East Hamptons’ Wittendale’s of all their hanging baskets on sale. And Bridgehampton’s Marders delivered two boxwoods to replace the holes in my hedges.

As the week marched on, we prayed for good weather. There was no contingency plan for rain, and there was no tent (as Miss-Runner-Up Wedding Planner had so rudely reminded us).

The day before the wedding, Miss Wedding Planner walked me through the next day’s events, which seemed reminiscent of the invasion of Normandy. She calmly described the onslaught as my face converted to stone. I slept not a wink that night.

On the morning of the big day, the weather was cold, overcast and blustery. The lighting designers were teetering in our trees, tethering large light balls that resembled the tent caterpillar nests I had recently removed. I looked up to see an 18-wheeler, filled with tables, chairs, glassware, etc., scraping my gates. Nardy Pest Control was spraying the yard with citronella oil to keep down the ticks, and I felt like I’d been hosed down with lemon Pledge.

An army of caterers arrived with large steel containers that fit nowhere. Wedding guests who had overnighted with us needed to know directions to the nearest yoga studio. Out-of-towners were calling for directions to our end of the Earth.

The string trio had a cellist with depth-perception problems. She couldn’t climb the stairs without falling, but insisted on carrying her Stradivarius up by herself. The jazz ensemble had to plug in everywhere, as did the lighting designers and caterers, and everyone’s sheet music was blowing all over.

Then suddenly, the clouds parted and the clear autumn sun came shining through.

The cadre of waiters arrived quickly, transforming our garden into a magical dining hall. The brides arrived with place-card arrangements and outfits in hand.

Paul and I remembered that we had to shower and change with the brides because the proverbial inn was chockful and brimming. Everyone adapted.

Guests arrived via the front door—not up the hydrangea path as ordained—because they are all friends and always come to the front door. Quickly the group congregated at the bluff, on the white benches, as the wedding party emerged to the sound of the triple ring from a nautical bell.

Karen’s nephews led her down our treacherous steps to Ilene’s octogenarian father who, as he haltingly walked them both down the aisle, proclaimed, “If you both would have done this 25 years earlier, this would have been a hell of a lot easier.”

As the Southampton Town Justice Deborah Kooperstein (the first female judge in Southampton’s history) pointed out, “Twenty-five years ago, this would not have been possible.”
She also noted how different it was to marry two people who had been together for such a long time and how meaningful it was that they were not just starting their lives together but had already spent much of their lives as a couple. Her declaration that Karen and Ilene were finally afforded the opportunity to be recognized as married in the eyes of the state and the public had everyone on their feet applauding.

Karen and Ilene exchanged vows that only a couple who had bravely spent 25 years together could share. With the rich blue waters of Gardiner’s Bay rolling beneath, the tent caterpillar’s nests lighting up, and the crisp September breeze enveloping all, joy was duly celebrated.