Blog: Weddings

Shelley and Gregg, law school friends of Stefanie's, got married on the beautiful roof deck of Washington's Hay Adams Hotel with a spectacular view of the White House, Washington and Jefferson Memorials, and more. Congratulations and best wishes for many happy years!

Once upon a Yom Kippur, a man named Doug went to services at a New York congregation he doesn't usually attend. The only people he knew there were his friends Rachel and Ben. At the service, Doug saw the woman of his dreams across the room. And whether by luck or by the hand of God, it so happened that this woman was also a friend of Rachel and Ben's. They were introduced, dated, time passed, and on October 29th, 2006, Dafna and Doug were married.

I took a few months off from photo editing after the marathon edits of Jamie and Erika's wedding and the Mothball, but in this new year, I now have them online as, appropriately, they lie in the sun on their honeymoon. Mazel tov, Dafna and Doug.

At Jamie & Erika's wedding reception I took 406 pictures. Here are the best 63, edited for your enjoyment, and concluding the wedding weekend picture panoply. You can see the best of the pictures from the entire weekend here. Once again, mazel tov to the world's best brother and sister-in-law!

Jamie and Erika's wedding day started out more leisurely for most of the family members, but not for the bride and groom - Jamie had to sneak in bites of a sandwich while we were taking the official wedding pictures. The pictures were followed by the signing of the ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract, stating that Jamie and Erika had entered into their union this day on "Kerem Martha".

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts marriage certificate is completely gender-neutral: it has two sides, "Party A" and "Party B", with spaces for "Party A Sex" and "Party B Sex", as well as "Surname After Marriage" for each Party (useful for Jamie and Erika, who are both changing their names).

I don't have pictures of the ceremony itself as I was in it, but after I finish getting up my pictures from the entire weekend, I'll post a few of the best from others who did capture more.

At a destination wedding, the rehearsal dinner is a much larger production than at more conventional weddings: everyone is from out of town, so everyone is typically invited, and it's like throwing a second wedding party, though shorter and without dancing. Instead, for entertainment, we watched a slide show which I assembled, featuring incredibly adorable pictures of Jamie and Erika as babies, plus family and friends, all the way up to the present day.

We also played the "shoe game." For those unfamiliar with this game, the bride and groom sit back to back on chairs. Each holds one of the bride's shoes in one hand and one of the groom's shoes in the other hand. (And this game could certainly be played with non-heterosexual couples, as long as the couple ensured some shoe style diversity.) The emcee (in this case, bridesmaid Jodi) reads various questions, like "who eats more?" and "who is the boss in the relationship?" Each member of the couple holds up the appropriate shoe indicating his or her answer. When the two disagree, hilarity ensues. In Jamie and Erika's case, the answers to the above sample questions were undoubtedly "Jamie" (as you can see here) and "Erika" (as you can see here), respectively, while other questions yielded disagreement and a few, like (if I remember correctly) "who mentioned marriage first" left both uncertain as to which shoe to select (a good thing, in the case of that question!)

Hooray for more wedding pictures!

After brunch on Saturday of the wedding weekend, we caught a few rays at the beach before the Alpert family and friends headed inland to set up for the rehearsal dinner at the Sailing Camp Park, a wooded park with a rustic lodge building overlooking Lagoon Pond. I had just put the finishing touches on my photo slideshow tribute to Jamie and Erika, and spent the afternoon at the park nervously checking the video and audio systems and running through the show to ensure the timings were all right.

As the sun set I joined the wedding party on Fuller Street Beach, the site of the wedding ceremony, for the rehearsal itself. Fuller Street is a popular beach for weddings in September, but nobody is allowed to reserve it - you simply have to show up and claim some space. As we arrived for the rehearsal, another couple who had gotten married earlier were on the beach with their photographer to get a few pictures in such a beautiful spot.

I drove up from New York in the pouring rain. Friday was rainy and gloomy. The weather reports predicted rain Saturday and clearing Sunday - perhaps just in time for the wedding, but perhaps not.

But Saturday morning dawned bright, clear, and sunny, and activities started to kick into high gear. First, Jamie took the groomsmen out to breakfast while Erika took the bridesmaids, and bestowed gifts on all. I got a beautifully engraved iPod nano, but sadly the pictures didn't come out (reflective shiny = nice design, hard to photograph).

And back at the house, friends and family of the Alpert clan gathered for a bagel brunch in the sunshine. Relive these events in installment number two of the wedding photos.

Here's group one of the wedding weekend photos. Before most of the guests arrive, before the official activities start, Thursday and Friday were set-up time: distributing gift buckets (to which we'd already devoted numerous hours removing obnoxious stickers that came affixed to the buckets), decorating the ag hall with lights, asembling centerpieces with lanterns and painted rocks denoting the name of each table, trying on the tuxedos, and meeting up with friends and family flying in from distant shores.

On Sunday, my brother, Jamie Alpert, married Erika Reinders, in a beautiful ceremony on the beach on Martha's Vineyard. Friends and family came from as far as Hawaii, and the outpouring of love from everyone was clearly evident, most of all from Jamie and Erika. The photographer, Joe Mikos, posted on his blog, "I was blessed with a stunning couple who were so totally into each other it made my job easy!"

I took about 700 pictures, so it'll take a little while to sort through them. In the meantime, here's one from Joe:

As the New York Times reported, they will combine their last names into Alders, following in the footsteps of such great couples as Rob (Hyman) and Lamelle (Rawlins) Ryman and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. For the record, I support (and in fact encouraged) the name blending.

Mazel tov, Jamie and Erika!