R

ozenblit - Vieira Wedding

 

October 11, 2002




The before and after of Moshe and Cristhiane's (pronoucned Kris-chi-an-ay) wedding probably occupied us more than any other single thing while we were in NYC. That's as it should be, as that's why we came. As soon as we heard that Moshe had met the love of his life and was planning to get married, we crossed our fingers that we would manage to be with them on the day. Part of the process was to find somewhere to stay in New York. We asked all of our friends in the NY area if they knew someone who was looking for a house-sitter or equivalent for one or two months. Our friend Sue Marens came up trumps for us. We had long wanted to spend more than just a few days in this metropolis that we had visited so often on day trips from New Jersey. Cris and Moshe's wedding was just the excuse we needed to fulfill that dream.

About a week after we arrived, and just a few days before the wedding, Gerry started work on a special wedding project. He wanted to create a hand-made keepsake for the happy couple in the spirit of a traditional Jewish ketubah, or marriage contract. He bought fabric and sharpened his felt-tip pens and the day before the wedding composed his masterpiece and put it down on fine linen. He then set his faithful assistant to work sewing seams and ribbons. It seemed like it would never get done in time, but the last stitches were made about an hour before the wedding celebration began.

As best man, Gerry had promised to help Moshe in any way he could. The most important job was to accompany the bride and groom-to-be to City Hall in downtown Manhattan for the civil ceremony. It turned out to be the smallest part of the entire celebration. We left early in the morning in the pouring rain to take the subway to the City Clerk’s office in downtown Manhattan. There, they filled out all the papers and pretty quickly were man and wife.

Immediately afterwards we all went to work preparing for that night: Cristhiane with the aid of her aunt Leonore spent the day getting decorated for the evening. Moshe and we went to Queens to get party supplies, in particular a helium canister. Afterwards Moshe and Gerry picked up a dozen pots of mums for table decorations and took them to the Beacon Hotel, the site of the party, and began blowing up balloons.(Incidentally, the marriage is truly a May-December marriage, as Cristhiane was born in May, Moshe in December, and he is considerably older than she.)

Saturday had the after effects of the wedding. We had volunteered to take the helium canister back and did so, in a way that expanded an hour task to nearly four. We made an unbelievable number of mistakes on the subway both going and coming. The intermediate part of it, done by taxi, was the easiest.






December 14, 2002