Include subtle (or not) humor to wedding party play list

Getting married — if you decide to throw an actual wedding rather than going down to the courthouse — is a process that requires the people involved to develop some preferences.
Even if you have next to no feelings about flower arrangements, cake toppers or linen colors, you will at some point be required to make a selection. One area where you probably have some preexisting opinions, though, no matter how anti-Pinterest you are, is music.
But one of the things I discovered while planning my upcoming wedding, and that was particularly true for me as a critic who pays a lot of attention to text, whether lyrics or dialogue, is that it’s much more fun to come up with wildly inappropriate wedding songs than to pick out tasteful ones. Here are nine of my favorites (you can make it 10 with “The Rains of Castamere” from “Game of Thrones,” which by this point is just far too obvious).
• “Band of Gold” by Freda Payne: A lot of terrific songs are on this list, whether you’re judging by wedding-inappropriate lyrics or just overall musical quality. But it’s impossible to imagine one that would garner a higher combined score in both categories than Freda Payne’s harrowing track about a wedding gone disastrously wrong.
• “Rent” by the Pet Shop Boys: Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have recorded some terrific love songs, among them “Home and Dry.” But I absolutely adore it when they spike their meticulously crafted pop music with poisonous lyrics. Part of the genius of the song is the way it goes back and forth on how much the narrator knows and how much he’s hiding from himself.
• “Don’t Marry Her” by the Beautiful South: After two exceedingly upsetting songs, it makes sense to mix things up a bit with this exceedingly cheeky track. “Don’t Marry Her” comes to us not just from the perspective of the other woman, but from a woman who would like to remain the mistress.
• “Baby, I’m an Anarchist” by Against Me!: One of my dear friends from college introduced me to Against Me! through this song, and I am not going to lie, it could double as the best song to play at a wedding or the worst. The whole second verse basically functions as a rejection of a marriage proposal that ends with a snarled “No I won’t take your hand / And marry the state.” It’s dark and funny, simultaneously mocking the self-righteousness of people who live their lives by completely rigid principle, while also arguing fairly sincerely that real love is impossible without political solidarity.
• “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift: I badly miss the Taylor Swift who wrote and sang country songs. But this self-aware, self-parodying track from her latest album is just fantastic. It’s chock-full of crazy. So maybe it’s the perfect cautionary tale for a wedding, or at least the modern wedding-industrial complex, after all.
• “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed” by Kinky Friedman: I’m not going to lie: Interviewing Kinky Friedman during his Texas gubernatorial run was one of the stranger experiences I’ve had as an entertainment journalist. But I still love this hilarious parody of confused male responses to feminism, which might be a deeply amusing thing to play at a bridal shower.
• “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues: This is a Christmas song, rather than anything explicitly about marriage or romance. But the conversation between a drunken couple who are hashing out the misery of their relationship in a jail’s drunk tank is an alternately chilly and cheery journey through the processes by which people convince themselves to settle.
• “Snow in Sun” by Scritti Politti: The Pogues are serious players when it comes to emotionally manipulative pop songs.”Snow in Sun” is a set of vows made by a guy you desperately wish wouldn’t try to pledge himself to you.

• “Runaway” by Kanye West: It’s, in extended form, an eight-minute conjuration of the kind of wedding toast where someone makes the deeply unwise decision to unburden himself or herself to the assembled guests.

A shotgun wedding highlighted 2015

Northwest Louisiana put together an interesting year from an outdoor standpoint with a number of significant happenings in 2015.
There was the good: Toledo Bend was named the No. 1 bass fishing lake in the country by BassmasterMagazine, Benton ruled in the National Archery in Schools Program once again and the top 10 fisheries in the area were named.
There was also some bad: The Red River jumped out of its banks, a potential Caddo Parish gun ordinance caused a stir, while David Parker and Jim Clark Jr. were among the outdoor enthusiasts who moved on.
Here’s a look back at three stories that stuck out in 2015:
Local couple marries at Martin’s Gun Shop
Some Saturday morning nuptials in southeast Shreveport may have redefined the term “shotgun” wedding, while offering up some entertainment of the redneck variety.
When Ricky Martin (not the singer) and Beverly Brooke (the singer from London) decided to get hitched in the states, they opted to make the move at Martin’s Gun Shop on Kay Drive, owned by Ricky’s dad. Henry Martin no longer sells guns, but he does expert repair on shotguns and there were plenty on hand inside the store, if a need arose.
How this wedding came to be is a miracle in itself and can be laid to rest on the heavily tattooed shoulders of Tammy Martin, sister of the groom and best friend of the bride. Dating a member of the 69 Eyes rock band in Finland, Tammy met Brooke on Facebook and decided to visit her a couple of years ago in London. The two became fast friends, so when Tammy returned stateside, Brooke came along for the ride.
“She didn’t know she was pregnant at the time,” Tammy said. “Brooke went back to London, but her family threw her out. She was homeless on the streets of London.”
But as luck would have it, Brooke found a $20 bill, or maybe it was a 20-pound piece, on the street. She called her U.S. friend to tell her the news.
“I told her to go to the race track and bet on the gray horse,” Tammy said. “She did that and won $1,500. She used the money to buy a plane ticket and come back here. God was taking care of her.”
But that’s not nearly “the rest of the story.” Tammy developed breast cancer, had a mastectomy and has undergone chemo and radiation. Although she’s doing well enough now to consider moving to Finland, Tammy got the shock of her life when she was released from the hospital. She discovered that her 55-year-old brother and 35-year-old best friend were dating.
“I thought they were kidding,” she said.
Ricky proposed in February, Brooke accepted and Tammy began making plans for the wedding. Since Ricky was recently laid off from his job, a barebones wedding was in order.
“They were looking for a place and I told them they ought to just have it at my shop,” Henry Martin said. “We could put up some tents and there’s plenty of parking at the Lodge across the street.”
So, Martin’s Gun Shop, which has been around since the muskets were brought over on the Mayflower, became the landing spot for the 60 or so folks who came to celebrate with the family on the memorable day.
Finding something borrowed and blue for the wedding wasn’t a problem. The wedding decorations of turquoise and orange were “recycled” from Amy and Shane Trichel’s wedding from a couple of weeks ago.
Brooke was tastefully dressed in a cream dress with turquoise sash and a sleeveless denim jacket. Like the rest of the bridal party, she wore brown cowboy boots, but had trouble deciding on a topper.
“I have two ‘ats and I’m not sure which to choose,” she said with a look of concern. “And I’m a bit nervous.”
The ceremony was conducted by Judge Barbara Douget, who wasted little time once she took the reins.
“We’re gonna make this quick, because it’s hot out here,” said Douget, who recently oversaw a wedding in front of the fish tanks at the Bass Pro Shops.
And quick it was. Once the words and rings were exchanged and the kiss was planted, Douget pronounced the couple “Mr. and Mrs. Ricky Martin.” Beverly instantly became and U.S. citizen who can now sing country music, while Ricky continues to stay clear of all microphones.
Appropriately, the post-wedding meal was catfish with all the trimmings, cooked by Trichel and Dillion Twohig, and served under several quickly erected tents.
Following a honeymoon trip to Eldorado Casino in Shreveport, the couple, along with 2-year-old Henry Brooke, were expected to reside at the Broadmoor home Henry.
Susie Boniol looked out her kitchen window in south Bossier’s Olde Oaks Subdivision one May day and what to her wondering eyes did she see but one giant alligator threatening her black lab.
It took just a matter of seconds for the demonstrative Boniol to scoop up Mingo and her three children making sure they were safely tucked away inside their home. The Boniol abode is located on one of the ponds surrounding Olde Oaks Golf Course, which offers “27 holes of outstanding golf,” according to the company website, along with gators in the 10-foot range.
“What frightened me was that it was hiding here in plain sight and it was huge,” Boniol said. “It had been swimming in the 3-1/2 acre pond, but it came up on our property. I hate to think what could have happened.”
Boniol called Wildlife Refuge in south Bossier and a representative there told her to get in contact with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to file and official nuisance complaint. Since it was after 5 p.m., she had trouble reaching an LDWF agent or biologist but finally got through on a special hotline number.
Given the complaint number she needed, Boniol contacted a nuisance animal removal specialist who offered “a ton of information” she needed.
“He came out the next day and said it was a male gator and that it had been circling in the pond looking for its next meal,” Boniol said.
Home owners in Olde Oaks own 14 feet into the water, according to Boniol, and her family regularly uses their pier area for fishing, boating and swimming. That might not happen again for the foreseeable future, since she believes more gators may be lurking in the depths of the unnamed pond.
Anyone with a nuisance alligator problem should be aware that alligators aren’t relocated, because no one wants them in their backyard, whether it’s a camp on Lake Bistineau or their residence on Cross Lake. Folks water skiing on the Red River don’t like seeing them either. But their meat makes and tasty meal and their skin can be turned into some pretty good boots, so harvesting them has its uses.
All Boniol knows is she doesn’t want any more gators in her backyard threatening her children or the family pet.
“We have a massive nutria rat problem on the pond, so it’s like a gator buffet,” she said. “There are also some overgrown empty lots, too.”
A baited hook was set up, similar to your favorite “Swamp People” episode, the 10-foot, 2-inch gator took the bait and was harvested.
Although the same wasn’t true for his razor and his barber, David Parker was never far from his time-tested Thermos of coffee, according to longtime friend George Hodges, currently in charge of the prized possession.
But more on the Thermos later.
Hodges remembers the first time he saw Parker, who passed away on in March due to a heart ailment, at a bass fishing tournament on Lake Bistineau in the mid-1980s.
“This guy was standing in front of me with seven of the biggest fish you ever saw on a stringer – probably 4 to 7 pounds each,” Hodges said chuckling. “His beard was down to his waist, his hair was down to his shoulders and he didn’t have any teeth. He looked like someone who had just come in out of the swamp.”
The pair would end up fishing together for 21 years, winning at least a half-dozen bass boats, but the fishing marriage wasn’t without an audition.
“Both of our regular partners had decided to quit tournament fishing, so I went to David and asked if he’d like to join up,” Hodges said. “He thought about it for a few minutes and then said, ‘let’s go fishing this weekend and we’ll see.’ I guess David wanted to interview me to see how I did.”
Fishing for money was never what David Parker was about – not that the veteran angler of North Louisiana fisheries didn’t capture his share of money before being diagnosed with Asian cancer in 2010. Parker eventually beat the disease, but his heart couldn’t survive the trauma. Services are set for later this week.
Whether he was fishing with Hodges, Gary Yelverton or Cindy Camus Pruett in a Thursday Night Tournament, Parker was always in contention on just about any body of water. He loved Cross Lake so much that he and longtime girlfriend Joan Mayfield-Parker were married on Jan. 8 under the lake’s pavilion, donated and built by Bass Life Associates in his name. Parker wasn’t hasty in making decisions, however. It took him over 23 years to ask Mayfield for her hand.
“David was pretty conservative and patient,” Hodges said. “I learned a lot about patience in fishing from him.”
He was also a tough cookie. Berney Bracken played football with Parker at Fair Park in the early 1960s.
“He was a little bitty fellow –probably not even 150 pounds, but he played offensive guard and he went up against guys weighing 230-240 pounds,” Bracken said. “What he lacked in size, he made up for in meanness.”
Parker was charter member of Bass Life Associates and was staple at that group’s Youth Fishing Tournament on Cross Lake every year. He also worked the Get Hooked on Fishing (Not Drugs) event annually on Caddo Lake. He was a guy who gave back a lot more than he took.
"David has probably fished in thousands of bass tournaments and he's never said 'no' to anyone in need,” said fishing buddy Dallas Miller, who often drove him for chemo treatments. “If there was a benefit bass tournament being held, he was always there."
Parker’s battle with cancer nearly came to an end in 2011 when a group of friends held a bass tournament to help with his mounting medical costs. He had lost his massive locks of blond hair and a long beard to match, thanks to the radiation and chemo treatments, but he had his priorities in order.
While talking with The Times at that event, Parker broke down when asked what his prognosis might be.
"Just tell everyone that I love them," he said. "I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and if he has room on the road of gold, I'll go walking with him."
Hodges said Parker acquired the red, one-quart Thermos, which survived a multitude of fishing trips across Northwest Louisiana, before they became fishing partners. His friend drank coffee “all day and half the night,” refusing to give it up for a new one. It had been Duck-taped together, hot glued and even reconstituted with epoxy at one point.
“But at the end of the day, you could still get a cup of hot coffee out of it,” Hodges said. “It was old and beat up, but it was dependable.
“And that’s a lot like my friend.”
Jim Clark taught his son about winning
Saturday’s funeral service at Shreveport’s University Church of Christ, honoring the late Jim Clark Jr., got off to a rousing start under the direction of longtime friend Curtis Shipley.
“It speaks to Jim’s sense of humor that he picked an ol’ country boy like me to conduct his funeral,” Shipley said to some chuckles. “If it’s too redneck, it’s Jim’s fault – and you can take it up with him the next time you see him.”
In front of a nearly full auditorium of friends, fans and family members, Shipley talked about the multi-talented Clark, who was magical with all three firearm disciplines – handguns, shotguns, rifles – was even more adept at creating firearms that changed the course of competitive shooting.
Clark did that with a grace and humility often unmatched in the industry. Although he rarely lost in a sport he spent several decades as a world-class competitor, he knew how to win and he how to lose. Sometimes he won to lose, something he passed on to sons JEC and Logan, who relayed a lesson he learned from his dad.
Logan had just won the 2004 regional sporting clay championships in Shreveport, the first of his own awards. He was waiting for the scores to be posted when Jim said it was time to head home.
“Wait a minute. We’re going home already? I won,” a confused Logan said.
“That’s right, you did. And you did good,” Jim said. “But who got second? That person over there in the corner crying.”
It was a 13-year-old boy who had been looking forward to the match for a long time.
“I looked at my dad and understood. At that moment I learned that some things were more important than winning,” Logan said. “My dad always taught me there was just one competitor you needed to worry about at a match and that was yourself.
“One thing my dad loved more than winning matches was passing his knowledge on to my brother and myself.”
Clark also had a pilot’s license although Shipley said he never had the opportunity to fly with his friend.
“Jim didn’t die in a plane crash, so I’d say he was pretty good,” Shipley joked.
Whether he was creating one of his masterpieces or competing for a noteworthy title, Shipley said at least one thing was unclear about Jim Clark Jr.

“When he was holding a rifle, did it become part of him or did he become part of it? I just know that together they could play some pretty good music.”

'Hate wedding' video offers glimpse at Jewish terror

The head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, is one of the most powerful people in the Likud's Central Committee. Together with a group of local council heads in Judea and Samaria, he appealed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Dec. 27, asking him to investigate claims by detained minors that they had been tortured by the Shin Bet. These minors are suspected of torching the house of the Dawabsha family in the West Bank village of Douma on July 31.
“We call on you to prevent the entire State of Israel from being dragged down that path until it becomes the kind of regime in which the investigator is also judge and executioner,” they wrote, asking the authorities to catch the “real” perpetrators of the deadly crime.
Dagan used Facebook to update his followers about his appeal to the prime minister. By doing so, he signaled support for the extreme right’s campaign against the Shin Bet, accusing the government agency of using torture to extract confessions from the Douma detainees.
The campaign organized raucous demonstrations and applied massive pressure to politicians aligned with the settlers to de-legitimize the Shin Bet. Nevertheless, it all screeched to a halt, largely because of the firm positions taken by HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett and the party’s powerful woman, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. Both of them expressed unequivocal support for the Shin Bet. The Yesha Council, the umbrella settlement organization, also published a statement in support of the Shin Bet.
In press interviews, Bennett and Shaked both stated that they had investigated the detainees’ claims of torture themselves. They said that not only was there no truth to these claims, they were also shocked by intelligence reports shared with them about how certain groups on the extreme right plotted to undermine the very foundations of the state.
But the death blow to this campaign of lies against the Shin Bet was undoubtedly the “hate wedding” video clip. The clip, aired Dec. 23 by Channel 10, shows wedding guests dancing with assault rifles held aloft and some of them stabbing a photo of baby Ali Dawabsha. In just two chilling minutes, the clip revealed the full extent of the danger posed by Jewish terrorism and the enormous urgency of the task facing the Shin Bet.
It's futile to search for any condemnation of the “hate wedding” on Dagan’s Facebook page. There wasn’t a single good word about the Shin Bet, either, as of Dec. 27. On the other hand, Dagan did write a post in support of Welfare Minister Haim Katz, who is running for chairman of the Likud Central Committee. Dagan wrote that he endorsed Katz in gratitude for the support the minister has offered to the cause of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.
Over the past few years, feral extremism has evolved within the settlements, in the form of the hilltop youth and other radical organizations that reject the very existence of the State of Israel. And so, when investigating the sources of this disturbing phenomenon and the environment in which it was born, it is worth pausing for a moment on Dagan. He is, after all, a rising political star in Israeli public life. Although he is only 35, his influence over thousands of Likud voters makes him one of the most sought-after people in the party.
A ​Haaretz profile of him that appeared Nov. 14 describes his activities in the years before he dedicated himself to his current public political life. Dagan was a founder of the group “Homesh First,” devoted to repeated attempts to resettle the outpost in northern Samaria that was evacuated as part of the Gaza Disengagement Plan in 2005. He is also a founder of the Samaria Settlers’ Committee, a group whose objectives include “aiding the residents of Samaria in their struggle against any possible assault on Jewish settlement in Samaria, through various means.”
In 2008, the two groups released a public statement titled “Mutual Responsibility: The Key to Victory.” The statement was really a manual on how to resist Israeli security forces, referred to as the “forces of destruction,” when they attempt to evacuate illegal outposts.
Dagan is now a major political figure with considerable influence on right-wing settlers. A sharp statement by him in response to the “hate wedding” video certainly could have helped put a stop to that horrific phenomenon, especially at this important juncture. He may yet do that, but for now, Dagan is too busy with something that is far more important to him personally. He is involved in the political intrigue within the ruling party, designed to bring about the election of Katz as chairman of the Likud Central Committee. Success there would give the settlers even more power in the highest echelons of government.
It is unclear whether Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was referring to Dagan in a seething interview he gave Dec. 26 to the Israeli Channel 2 program “Meet the Press.” In it, he called on influential figures on the right and in the religious Zionist movement to do some soul-searching in light of the recent revelations. In any case, that seemed to have been his intention when he said, “When we blink at questions about the rule of law, about illegal construction and personal attacks, against me, for example … even by other ministers and Knesset members. … And when the Supreme Court comes under fire, young people who see things in black and white will conclude that it is legitimate to throw rocks and bags of urine at the police … and to puncture the tires of police cars.”
Ya’alon was obviously referring to the leaders of HaBayit HaYehudi. He meant Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who was on site during the evacuation of the Dreinoff buildings of the Beit El settlement, and to Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel, who has called for the Shin Bet division that handles Jewish terrorism to be dissolved. And Ya’alon was talking about Knesset members such as Bezalel Smotrich, who declared that the Douma arson was not an act of terror, and Motti Yogev, who recently suggested that the Supreme Court be bulldozed.
Ya’alon’s comments struck at the heart of the issue. Jewish terrorism is just as much a consequence of the overall mood in the settlements as it is of anything else. Without insinuating anything about religious Zionism as a movement, it is impossible to ignore the fact that statements and actions in defiance of the state and the rule of law, such as the de-legitimation of the justice system, the uprooting of trees in Palestinian villages and illegal settlement construction have all become commonplace. Even worse, statements in that vein are interpreted and translated by young people into violent acts.
It may be just a few dozen young people associated with the hilltop youth who are behind the price tag attacks and celebrate the murder of a sleeping infant. Nevertheless, they cannot be considered apart from their surrounding environment. Their closest circles include their parents and rabbis, while their broader circles include public figures from Judea and Samaria — and their outermost circles, politicians representing right-wing parties.
Anyone in those circles who has already dissociated himself from the campaign against the Shin Bet and expressed disgust in response to the “hate wedding” did the right thing. Anyone who hasn’t done that yet should. The condemnation should come from every possible group the right. Anyone who ignores the violence, stammers a weak response or makes light of these acts legitimizes Jewish terrorism and the assault on the rule of law.

The “hate wedding” video should be a wake-up call to the leaders of the religious Zionist movement and the Yesha Council. It is time for them to take responsibility for the evil that is sprouting in their backyard.

Sarah Ann Rokosz and James Michael Donovan wedding

Sarah Ann Rokosz and James Michael Donovan were united in marriage on June 27, 2015 at Corpus Christi Parish, W. Pittston, surrounded by family and friends. Monsignor John Sempa officiated the ceremony with music done by organist David Tighe and violinst Mark Woodyatt.
The bride is the daughter of Walter and Deborahann Rokosz, Wyoming. She is the granddaughter of the late Charles and Helen Rokosz, Plymouth, and the late Robert and Frances Park, Wilkes-Barre.
Sarah is a 2002 graduate of Wyoming Area and a 2005 graduate of Luzerne County Community College where she earned an Associates of Science degree in business management. She is a 2008 graduate of The Pennsylvania State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business management/marketing. Sarah is employed by Mohegan Sun Pocono.
The groom is the son of James and Theresa Donovan, Oswego, New York. He is the grandson of the late John and Mary Ann Bartholomew, Oswego, New York, and the late Francis and Mary Donovan, Oswego, New York.
James is a 1999 graduate of Oswego High School, Oswego, New York. He attended Oswego State University. He is employed as a supervisor at Mohegan Sun Pocono.
The bride was escorted down the aisle and given away by her father. She chose her friends Jami Koch as matron of honor and Laura Harding as maid of honor. Bridesmaids were Kristen Martin, friend of the bride and Ellen Hayes, sister of the groom. Junior bridesmaids were Lyla and Claudia Rehill, Ainsley Flynn and Adelay Seidel, all cousins of the bride. The flower girl was Delaney Flynn, cousin of the bride.
The groom chose his best friend, Patrick Tobin, as best man. Groomsmen included Daniel Armellino, friend of the groom; Patrick Donovan, cousin of the groom; and Shawn Hayes, brother-in-law of the groom. Ring bearers were Jackson and Jordan Medrano.
Scriptural readings were given by Clare Donovan, cousin of the groom, and Kylie Cox, cousin of the bride. Offertory gifts were presented by Karin Kamor and John Rokosz, godparents of the bride and Nancy Knight, godmother of the groom and Peter Donovan, uncle of the groom.
A bridal shower brunch was hosted by the mother of the bride at Coopers Seafood Waterfront, Pittston. A rehearsal dinner was given by the parents of the groom at Nonno’s Pizza & Restaurant, Moosic. An evening cocktail hour and reception were held at the Via Appia, Taylor.

The couple honeymooned at the Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas. They reside in Wyoming with their two dogs JJ and Bella.

Wedding dresses become burial gowns for babies in the Valley

On a quiet street in a senior living development in northeast Fresno, three women in their 80s are hard at work making burial gowns for the youngest and smallest among us.
The dresses are given to Hinds Hospice, which distributes them to grieving families for children who are born premature or medically fragile and die shortly after birth, or for those who had a stillborn baby.
A lot of love is poured into these delicate creations – by the volunteer seamstresses and those donating the fabric. The burial gowns were once wedding, bridesmaid and quinceañera dresses.
Merry Derrick, Peggie Morgan and Antonia Rhodes, along with Rhodes’ daughter, Becky Rowe, have made more than 200 of these small dresses since they started their work a few months ago.
Rowe gets chills collecting donated wedding dresses.
“Tears would stream down my face,” Rowe says. “I got so emotional every time – and I still do, every time. I just felt God was calling me to do something good for someone.”
the same without knowing who would receive their gifts. Then Morgan learned women with the Athena Philoptochos Society of St. George Greek Orthodox Church were also making these dresses and donating them to the Hinds Hospice Angel Babies program, which serves families in Fresno, Madera and Merced counties.
The women joined forces and, collectively, have made more than 425 infant gowns for the program. They also make cloth diapers and envelopes that can be used to hold hospital paperwork and death certificates, and knit baby blankets and caps – many just the size of a lemon or egg. Rhodes knit 250 of these hats in three weeks.
Every piece is a unique and beautiful creation. Derrick, a retired potter, likes to paint things like teddy bears and animals on many of the dresses. Morgan recently made a boy’s gown that has a vest adorned with tiny military medals.
The first delivery to Hinds Hospice was in March. Angel Babies helps around 35 families a month, says its program director Kathy Cromwell. Since Angel Babies began in 2001, it’s helped grieving families cope with the deaths of around 3,800 babies.
Hinds Hospice stresses the importance of providing “dignity at the end of life,” Cromwell says, and the handmade burial dresses help with that. It’s important that the babies “get to wear something that’s so beautiful, because they are so beautiful.”
Elaine Sotiropulos with St. George also got the idea for making gowns from the story of the Texas volunteers.
“A wedding gown is such a symbol of beauty, and to take something that is used in one way and is beautiful and to repurpose it into another beautiful use … the giver receives a lot of that warmth and love,” Sotiropulos says. “It’s different than just buying fabric.”
Amber Sweilem, 23, of Fresno donated her dress shortly after her July wedding.
“Since I was a little girl I dreamed of my wedding – especially my wedding dress. But after my wedding, I wasn’t going to need it anymore. I know a lot of people have them dry-cleaned and put in boxes and hung on walls, but that just never seemed like an option to me. I’d rather something that meant so much to me go toward a good cause, and I couldn’t think of anything better.”
Typically, around 15 burial gowns can be made from each wedding dress, but one recently yielded enough material to make 35.
Morgan received one wedding dress that belonged to a woman who was married in 1945. She died recently in a center for people with Alzheimer’s disease. Her daughter found the dress while cleaning out her mother’s apartment.
“This is made just from lace, most of it disintegrated, but I was able to salvage this,” Morgan says, holding up a burial gown at Rhodes’ home.
She shared a photo of the dress with the daughter.
“She wept and wept and wept. Her mother had 10 miscarriages before she was born and she said, ‘One of my siblings could have worn this.’ So, that’s why I do it.”
The gowns also save grieving families from shopping for a dead child, says Cindi Boukidis with St. George.
“It’s not easy to bury a child, and the last thing you want to do is go shopping for something when you can’t find something this size – and you don’t want some doll dress.”
The Angel Babies gowns are special because they are “lovingly and prayerfully made,” Boukidis says.
Sweilem agrees.
“Being a newlywed, having children someday is something me and my husband both look forward to, and I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be one of those mothers who had lost their child. … I just hope it brings them a sense of closure.
“Nothing of course can ever fill that hole that I’m sure they feel from losing a child, but at least knowing that their baby was clothed in something that was made out of love … maybe it would bring them some sense of relief.”

Radical Right-Wing Wedding Video Condemned

Guests are seen dancing with guns and knives, and even stabbing a picture of murdered Palestinian baby, in wedding video.
A video aired on Wednesday documented a radical right-wing couple’s wedding in which guests danced with guns, knives, and Molotov cocktails. At one point, a reveler is seen repeatedly stabbing a picture of the infant Ali Dawabsheh, who died in a fire suspected to have been a terror attack committed by radical right Jews.
The youths seen in the video were said to be familiar with the suspects being questioned in connection with the murders of three members of the Dawabsheh family, including baby Ali and his two parents.
It was screened in full for right-wing activists in Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s office.
The Defense Ministry declined to comment on the video, merely noting that it reaffirms Ya’alon’s condemnation on Tuesday of incitement against the Shin Bet, which is questioning the suspects.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, did issue a condemnation of the video, saying, “The shocking pictures that were broadcast this evening show the true face of a group that constitutes a danger to Israeli society and to the security of Israel. We are not prepared to accept people who deny the laws of the state and do not view themselves as subject to them. The pictures underscore how important a strong Shin Bet is to the security of us all.”
Sources who saw the complete video reported that it becomes even more disturbing.
Some on the right called for people to distance themselves from those in the video following its release.
“We were stunned for a few minutes,” said Yesha Council Chairman Avi Roeh, who viewed the video in Ya’alon’s office. “There were parts that I couldn’t watch. It’s shocking. We couldn’t believe there are such radical youths. This is a group that doesn’t belong to anything, and certainly not to us. What I was afraid of is occurring – we are being forced into a defensive position, even though I feel that we don’t have to defend ourselves. There will always be a few politicians who will try to goad us. These things don’t happen in our neighborhood.”
The bride and groom in the video are well-known among the radical right. The video and other materials from the wedding have been given to Judea and Samaria District Police ahead of a planned investigation.
“Such acts are not the way of Judaism,” said Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau. “It’s a rejection and repudiation of the values of the Jewish people, of the Jewish Torah, and of the uniqueness of the Jewish people. Parents and educators must take it upon themselves, along with law enforcement, to do everything possible to prevent such horrifying identification with acts of terror and appalling murder.”
Meanwhile, questioning of the suspects in the Dawabsheh murders has continued.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this page are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Media Line Ltd., it's management, staff, advertisers and sponsors. The Media Line bears no responsibility for opinions and/or information appearing herein.

What I Would Change About My Wedding: A Wedding Planner's Perspective

Yup that's me, in all my '90s bridal glory. This year would have marked my seventeenth wedding anniversary. Regardless of the fact that I am no longer married (we divorced seven years ago), my wedding day still holds fond memories for me. In all the drama that was my divorce -- and there was a lot of it -- I wouldn't trade my wedding day for the world. I have great memories of fun with my family and friends, photos of my daughter in the cutest flower girl dress, and cherished memories of my father who is no longer with us. Looking back now I wish I'd had looked at it for what it was -- a chance to create memories and not been, dare I say, such a "Bridezilla." Even if the marriage didn't last, I still wish I could look back on the day and feel like I had appreciated these memories as they were being made, instead of focusing on all the small, unimportant details. The saying, "Had I known then what I know now" is very relevant to me. Being a wedding planner, sure there are a few details I would change about the décor and my '90s style wedding dress, but a few key changes would have made a huge difference on the wedding day itself.
I would have delegated more.
I'm a wedding planner -- also lovingly known as "a control freak" by most of my family. I was a wedding planner in the making in 1998 -- not a professional wedding planner yet, but still possessed the trait that makes it difficult for me to give up control. My big DIY project for my wedding was my wedding favors. I bought these cute little terra cotta pots and filled them with wax to make candles. Long story short, my easy DIY project turned into a tedious time consuming pain in the ass. And like any bride, I left finishing my DIY project to the last minute. I remember leaving for my nail appointment the day before the wedding, only to come home to find that a few of my bridesmaids had graciously finished them all for me. I quickly examined all of them to make sure they did them correctly, and sure enough, they were done perfectly! I wish I had just asked for their help in the first place instead of trying to do it all on my own and wasting so much time on such a small detail.
I would have had my parents say a speech.
This is one of my biggest regrets. My favorite part of the hundreds of weddings I've planned is the emotional speeches from the parents, and I am sad that I didn't get to experience that with my mom and dad. Despite the fact that I am no longer married, this would have been something I definitely would like to rewatch on my wedding video. At the time, there was a bit of tension with my in-laws, and I chose not to have any parents speak at the wedding to avoid any drama. Silly me! There may have been tension, but I am sure they would have only said loving things about their son in their speech. I regret letting petty differences affect the memories I could be cherishing today.
I would have had less bridesmaids.
Let's face it, there are friends that you have that you just aren't going to be friends with in ten or twenty years from now. I had five bridesmaids -- my best friend as my maid of honor, my cousin and my sister, as well as my ex-husband's cousin and a girl I was friends with at the time of my wedding. I obviously don't see my ex-husband's cousin anymore, and I haven't talked to that one friend in over ten years. Choose wisely, even if you have a lot of close friends and are feeling pressured to have all of them in the wedding party. A small wedding party is more manageable and carries a lot less drama!
I would have had an unplugged wedding.
Ok, so we didn't have iPhones in 1998, but people still had cameras, and at times I felt like I was being harassed by the paparazzi! Being pulled away from special moments to turn towards guest's cameras to pose, instead of being able to soak it all in. Take my advice -- going unplugged not only allows you to be in the moment, but lets your guests enjoy every detail as well, instead of seeing it all through the lens of a camera.
I would have invited kids.
Gasp! This is one of the biggest issues for some couples, and while I always tell my brides that this is their wedding and no matter what, guests should just show up and shut up, looking back I think I should have made a different decision on this. We wanted my daughter and Godson to be the only kids at the wedding, as they were the flower girl and ring bearer. But looking back, was it really such a big deal? Despite the fact that my ex-mother-in-law told her family to bring their kids even if it stated otherwise on the invitations (see point #2), I wish I would have just invited the kids. Sure there would have been a few more rugrats running around, but would it have been the worst thing? Sometimes you have to pick your battles, and this would have just saved a lot of drama. Look at it with perspective and take the high road for the sake of your sanity. Sometimes these things become more about a power struggle and getting your own way than what's best in the long run.

So my advice, from a wedding planner and past bride -- plan your wedding with memories in mind. Don't let little issues and problems be what you remember of your day. That is what a wedding day is all about isn't it? Creating memories. Your memories of the day will last forever, make sure they are good ones.

Dream wedding donated to breast cancer survivor and husband

When Britta and Chris Sieggen met in 1999, they knew. They knew from their shared language of movie quotes and Beatles lyrics. They knew from their mutual love for trying new things — foods and adventures.
“There was something about Chris,” Britta said. “I felt like he was almost a soul mate right off the bat, like I had known him for such a long time.”
Getting engaged that November, three months after meeting, felt natural and not at all rushed.
“I felt like I had the whole package right there,” Britta said, “so I wasn’t going to let him go, that’s for sure.”
Months later, in February 2000, everything changed.
“It’s the time of your life, you’ve just gotten engaged, and life throws a little curveball at you,” Britta said.
Britta was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 34 — the same age her mother had been when she received what would become a fatal diagnosis.
“My mom passed away from breast cancer when I was 11, so I was always very much aware of the probability or possibility of me getting breast cancer, and so were my doctors,” she said.
Chris and Britta decided to go forward with the wedding, even though it meant Britta would be in the middle of treatment on their special day.
“I wasn’t going to let (cancer) ruin or beat the best thing I had going in my life, and that was Chris,” Britta said.
Chris and Britta were married in a simple ceremony at Chris’ childhood church on Oct. 21, 2000.
“He won’t take a lot of credit for it, but he basically planned our whole wedding,” Britta said. “He stepped up and knew I wanted to do this.”
Chris was a University of Kansas undergrad at the time, but he did what he needed to plan a wedding and keep up with school work.
“I felt like no matter how difficult this part of life was going to be for me, it’s completely, totally a minuscule percentage of the hell that she was going to go through,” he said. “I might have been stressed and freaked out, but I wasn’t staring death in the face either.”
After the wedding, Britta completed treatment and eventually got a clean bill of health. Nearly 15 years passed.
Then in July 2014, Britta found a lump. She had breast cancer again.
And another crisis struck: Chris lost his job when the church where he worked closed.
“We were just trying to follow God and serve God, and then to lose a job, and — in the middle of me trying to find work — she is diagnosed with cancer a second time,” Chris said. “You’re just like, ‘What?!’
“It was one of those hard, honest, bang-your-fist-on-the-chest-of-God moments,” he said.
Again, Britta soldiered through treatment.
“I made a decision without batting an eye that I was going to get a double mastectomy,” she said.
Three months after her mastectomy and chemotherapy (which, she’s happy to report, has improved drastically in the past 15 years), the news was good.
It was then that Britta’s good friend and neighbor, Christine Darden, unveiled the plan she’d been secretly working on for months.
Darden owns Celebrations of Love, a Kansas City wedding and event planning business. She knew Britta and Chris wanted to celebrate their 15-year wedding anniversary in a big way — in a “big ball of wow,” Chris said.
Britta remembers Darden coming to her with the news that she was using all of her wedding vendors to gift the Sieggens a dream vow-renewal ceremony and reception.
“I still get goosebumps,” Britta said. “I feel so humbled and grateful that so many people gave of their time and their money for us.
“That means money and time away from their families,” she said. “That’s what blows me away about it all. I get really teary-eyed. All these people had never even met me.
Donations for the vow renewal totaled about $14,000 in goods and services.
“It really gives you hope,” she said. “People don’t even meet you, and they want to give because they can. It’s amazing.”
The Sieggens renewed their vows Oct. 17, almost 15 years to the day of their wedding.

How to Plan an Interfaith Wedding

Religion is a very personal thing. There's no requirement that two people who fall in love with one another have to share the same religious beliefs. In fact, interfaith marriages are actually quite common now. Although politicians preaching a return to "family values" often talk about how families are stronger when they go to church together in their community, the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of brides and grooms choose their mate for qualities other than their religion.
For many interfaith marriages, religion is irrelevant until they have children and have to decide if they're going to have a baptism or a bris, or neither. Although Jewish law, for example, actually dictates that in the case of interfaith marriages, the children resulting from the marriage should follow the faith of the mother (even if she's not Jewish), most parents today choose to raise their children in the faith that is most comfortable and convenient for them, not what is dictated by the rules of any particular religion.
Don't get me wrong -- I have plenty of friends who have very strong faith, and are active in their churches and would NEVER have considered marrying someone who didn't believe in Jesus Christ, or the Book of Mormon or whatever their particular religion embraces. With that said, very few brides and grooms who would qualify themselves as "religious" actually choose to have destination weddings (my specialty) because they want to get married in their home church. Their church family is very important to them and their wedding day would be incomplete if they weren't married where they regularly worship, surrounded by their church family.
It used to be the case that if one half of a couple was deeply entrenched in their own religion (use Catholicism or Judaism as an example here) and their significant other was not, the partner would join the fiancé's church or temple and begin religious education classes to become a member of that faith. This dates back to a time when, in some cases, a person couldn't marry outside their faith and continue to be a part of their own religious community. As times have changed and traditions have relaxed, more religious entities have become more tolerant, and found ways to permit interfaith unions for their members. But still, that isn't true of all religions.
Destination wedding ceremonies are usually performed by non-denominational officiants who can perform any wedding ceremony they're given. I advise my clients to plan a ceremony that incorporates aspects of their own religions, if that's important to them. I've seen plenty of interfaith weddings where there were prayers mentioning Jesus through the ceremony, and then ended with the groom doing the traditional Jewish stomping on the glass as everyone cheered "Mazel Tov!" It doesn't even seem unusual to me anymore.
It is possible to have a mixture of religious traditions at the same wedding ceremony and reception, without having to label the wedding any specific faith. We see a lot of that -- and it's very interesting to watch how brides and grooms choose to incorporate the things that are important to them. Sometimes the only thing Jewish about a wedding, for example, is the glass breaking and traditional Horah dance at the reception. There might not be a yarmulke on site, and pork and shellfish may be featured on the wedding menu (along with other options for those who do observe dietary restrictions).
In one case, we did two completely separate wedding ceremonies -- one right after the other -- because the bride was Persian and her parents insisted they do the traditional ceremony where they taste a bunch of significant items and release doves at the end. The ceremony wasn't in English, and the groom hadn't the slightest idea what was going on, but he didn't care about that because he and the bride had exchanged vows in a traditional American-style wedding ceremony 15 minutes earlier. It was time-consuming, to be sure, but I thought it was a really lovely way to incorporate traditions that were critically important to the bride's parents who were, in this case, picking up the entire wedding tab.
For the reception, the menu was split pretty much in half with traditional Persian delicacies I'd never heard of, and that our caterers had to research carefully and import all kinds of unusual ingredients not commonly found in every grocery store to make, and more common foods that everybody else was sure to be familiar with. The guests loved it! And none of the parents involved felt shortchanged because all of their traditions from both sides had been honored.
Let me be clear -- totally mixing religious traditions and observances isn't just a destination wedding phenomenon -- I've attended multiple weddings at synagogues stateside, followed by receptions at Jewish country clubs where there was a fantastic raw bar during the cocktail hour. It all depends on whether the couples' families and the wedding venue are conservative or reformed, and which rules they insist on observing.
What I think is MOST IMPORTANT is that brides and grooms are celebrating their weddings in the manner that they choose, including God (or whomever they worship) as much or as little as they wish in their wedding ceremony. I strongly believe that decision should be based entirely on the wishes and feelings of the wedding couple themselves, not the desires of their families. And that's when things get tricky.
Many interfaith couples choose to get married away from home for the sole purpose of avoiding the battle over whether the wedding will be held in their family's church or synagogue. They spend a lot of time and money creating beautiful wedding weekends that reflect their own personal taste and style. They include religious traditions that mean something to them, and they skip the ones that don't. And sometimes, that gets touchy on the actual wedding day if everybody attending the wedding has their own opinions. It gets even more complicated (and sometimes emotional) when the bride and groom haven't warned their parents that they will not be celebrating their wedding in the religious tradition in which they were raised.
Several years ago, I planned a Wiccan wedding for a bride and groom who had been raised Jewish and Catholic, respectively. The groom's parents were not in attendance because they objected to their son's lifestyle choices, most specifically the fact that he'd left the Catholic Church to become a witch. The bride's family was present and accounted for, but they didn't know!!! In fact, the mother of the bride didn't find out the celebrant was a Wiccan priest until she asked me where the rabbi was at the wedding rehearsal. Truly, that was the definition of awkward.
I have to give the bride's elderly parents a lot of credit for keeping their composure, and not making any sort of stink, when they found out that instead of getting married under a traditional chuppah, we would be "casting a circle" and "calling the elements" and smudging all their 80-year-old friends from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with sage. Because that is definitely something you see at every wedding, right? Not.
It occurred to me later that the bride had ambushed her parents intentionally to avoid fighting about it, but I still don't think it was the right approach. While the bride and groom certainly have every right to exchange vows in whatever manner they choose, if the wedding is going to be something REALLY different from what the parents are expecting, it's a good idea to let them know before they create their own guest lists. That was the one thing the Wiccan bride's mother said that really got my attention: "I wish I'd known before I invited everyone from my neighborhood." Oops.
Whether they celebrate a specific religion or are just spiritual, what's most important is that the bride and groom have the option of being as religious -- or as secular -- as they wish for the wedding celebration. The decision to include specific religious observances and traditions should be solely that of the couple, and not overly influenced by their families or other outsiders.
A final thought on this matter: Make sure your wedding planner, officiant and/or Master of Ceremonies is aware of what exactly you want (and don't want) at your wedding ceremony and reception. Sometimes, well-intentioned wedding guests will request specific dances (like the Horah for a Jewish wedding) because they simply expect the couple will want to do it, never thinking that an interfaith couple may have intentionally decided to skip that tradition. The best bet for avoiding any conflict around religion-based traditions is to make sure the people in charge of running the wedding know what the bride and groom's wishes are, so they can head off any potential problems.

Good luck and happy wedding planning from Sandy Malone Weddings and Events!

The choreographed big fat Indian wedding

In the new improved Indian wedding, everybody, not just the bride and groom, get married. Or so it seems. Everyone and everything look as if they are snorting the white powdery stuff, as revelry takes on a psychedelic and manic air. The scale at which the event is pitched has gone haywire, and it seems that nothing can be excessive enough. And while this new and very passionate relationship with weddings is part of a larger involvement with the world of consumption, there is something about weddings that stands apart from everything else.
In earlier times, marriages happened to families. The marriage was an institution with set conventions and rules, to which families conformed. The event was culturally fraught and the overall feeling was one of responsibility and more than a little dread, as things perpetually teetered on the brink of going wrong. The bride and groom were the victims of the ceremony, and by no means the protagonists. They had little to do with the arrangements and had little or no control over their own actions. They wore strange clothes, were given constant instructions that they did not understand but followed, and looked dazed and awkward through it all.
The marriage was, as it is now, a pivotal institution. It was the most prominent site of tradition, where the past gathered itself to anxiously usher in a future. The baton was passed to the next generation in an atmosphere of tight control. The ‘boy’ and the ‘girl’ were not fully realized individuals but fragments of the family tree, twigs lacking any independent existence. The wedding script was written elsewhere, in a different time; the families concerned had to faithfully perform their roles out of a time tested screenplay. Cultural differences of even a small kind needed to be skillfully negotiated, for deviations from tradition produced anxiety, and the fear of nameless consequences.
Things have certainly changed. Weddings are now meant to be pleasurable, and not burdensome. The numbers of events in each wedding keeps growing, as does the significance imbued in each element of the wedding. Every bit of the wedding is now a little monument, to be referred to only in capitals — and the most striking change in the wedding is the introduction of the idea of choreography. Things cannot simply be arranged — they need to be choreographed.
The imagination is cinematic — and Bollywood is everywhere. The venue is a set, and each area a visual frame that reeks of some ‘theme’. The idea of ‘themes’ is an attempt to superimpose another text on to the wedding; the wedding itself is emptied out of meaning, what it provided is an excuse and a framework for an invented meaning to get pasted on. The inherited meaning of the wedding is deemed insufficient, providing an excuse for scale but lacking content which is filled in with the help of themes. The wedding becomes a canvas on which the individuals concerned paint on a more specific shade of meaning, chosen most often out of a pre-existing template of possibilities provided by the thriving institution of the wedding planner. The idea of an external agency, who puts together the wedding underlines the fact the wedding is now an ‘event’, to be conceived of and managed as a piece of entertainment. Every item in the wedding thus points outwards — how will it look, will it engage, will it photograph well and outshine other efforts mounted by one’s peers?
The food is an array of choices that emphasizes ‘variety’ and ‘novelty’ — the desire for anchorage is long gone and what is sought today is transportation. To the outer realms of one’s imagination, using the exotic, the vividly coloured and variously textured items on the exhaustive menu. For once, it is not taste that is paramount; wedding food gives one an opportunities to experience the exciting possibilities that lie ‘out there’.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift is in the role of the lead pair, who now take their place center-stage without a trace of shyness. The wedding is now about them; they are no longer empty vessels through which the river of continuity made its way. They sing, dance, coo appreciatively to each other, they act out a scripted romance, record every moment of these days against exotic backgrounds and change costumes every few hours.
The wedding today is truly a junction — it is here that the accumulated past accommodates a more specific and distinctive future, where the collective becomes the backdrop against which the individual gets highlighted, where notions of specialness are carved out of the reality of ordinariness and the exotic is contrived from the everyday, where families still come together not so much in memory as in celebration. As a cultural encounter, it produces a lower level of anxiety as the stakes have reduced on both sides. The adjustment required post-marriage has more to do with individual compatibility than a meshing together of two ways of life. More than a cultural no-man’s-land, it is now a performance arena, for both sides to put their best foot forward, often literally.

The wedding has become the overloaded-with-excess institution it has because it is able to advertise all that is valued today simultaneously and in the desired proportions. The continued importance of the family, the wealth and stature that has been accumulated, the emergence of individuals with their own notions and taste, the desire to enact fantasies of grandiloquence, the kind of guests one can command, all of these come together at the wedding. For a brief while, we get to feature in our own Bollywood film. We egest everything we have seen, imagined or consumed, by arraying it around our choreographed splendid selfs. The wedding is a public screening of private fantasy, with every element amplified. In its craving for specialness, it tells that the greatest curse of our times is ordinariness and the biggest fear is to lead a life that does not need to be obsessively photographed.

http://diugdale.naganoblog.jp/e1836316.html

If traditional wedding photography gives you a case of the yawns, consider taking your big day portraits to new heights by posing on the side of a cliff.
Jay Philbrick and his wife Vicki, of Philbrick Photography in North Conway, New Hampshire, specialize in portraits of people perched 350 feet above the Mount Washington Valley floor.
Prior to starting his photography business, Philbrick was a full-time climbing guide from 1994 to 2004 and a U.S. Air Force pilot before that for 14 years. With that kind of resume, it would be easy to assume that Philbrick has always felt comfortable high up in the air, but that’s not necessarily true.
“Let’s just say I have a healthy respect for heights,” he told The Huffington Post. “I don't run around a cliff without a fear in the world and I still get little butterflies for sure."
It was only a matter of time before he merged his passion for climbing with his craft.
“In my photography I had always been attracted to the contrast of a beautiful subject in a stark or unlikely location,” Philbrick said. “And the cliff ledges I had in mind [from guiding] seemed perfect for this.”
In 2008, four years after starting his photography business, Philbrick finally got the chance to try out his idea when a couple that were climbers hired him to cover their wedding.
“I asked them if they were up for it and they were,” he said.
To date, no other client has actually had climbing experience. Philbrick claims that even without having climbed before, the shoot is completely safe.
“In fact, we are all probably at greater risk driving to and from the session than we are when cliffside,” he said. “The only issue we have really had has been with the weather, and unfortunately, we don't have much control over that.”
For each shoot, Philbrick works with a trained and certified mountain guide named Marc Chauvin. On the day of the session, Philbrick and Chauvin wake up as early as 3:30 a.m. to build “anchors and raising and lowering systems we'll need for the couple, myself and Marc.”
Once Philbrick, his wife Vicki, Chauvin, and an assistant are on site, the bride and groom are lowered one at a time and tied into a hidden anchor on the ledge. When the couple is in place, Philbrick directs them into different poses while hanging off the side of the cliff secured in his own gear.
“I am sometimes to the side, right above, or even on the same ledge with them,” he said.
While he shoots, Vicki and their assistant also snap shots, getting pictures from different locations and angles. The sessions usually last about 90 minutes and are typically completed an hour or two after sunrise.
Philbrick says that there is barely any retouching involved in the editing process.

“There is no Photoshop whenever possible,” Philbrick adds. “Sometimes something sticks out a little due to an oversight and I remove it in post, but I try really hard to just have all the safety gear hidden.”

Is Julianne Hough Having a Winter Wedding?

Calling all snow bunnies! When she's not critiquing dance moves as a judge on Dancing With the Stars, or showing off her own professional dance skills with brother, Derek Hough, the gorgeous, and talented, Julianne Hough is busy planning her highly anticipated nuptials to fiancé, Brooks Laich! The bride-to-be is dropping more hints — and possible snow tracks — on what she has in store for a potential winter wedding!
The 27-year-old starlet, who announced her heartwarming engagement to her Washington Capitals hockey player fiancé back in August, has been busy teasing wedding plans to her anticipated pending nuptials. The dance pro — who has been crowned twice on Dancing With the Stars — uses her personal blog Jules to document her wedding planning process. (Lucky us!) A recent post titled "Winter Wedding Wonderland" provides more insight than ever to this blonde beauty's big day ideas.
The detailed post captures the bride-to-be's possible "wintry theme" with Hough even mentioning how "the thought of getting married surrounded by snowcapped mountains and grey-ish white skies sounds pretty magical." We definitely agree!
Stunning snapshots of satin gloves, towering centerpieces, budding hydrangea bouquets, dainty décor, and a berry-topped white wedding cake provide a visual yearbook to a possible winter wedding. The Footloose actress also lists an assortment of fur shrugs and feather overlays that could conceivably adorn one of the five wedding dresses in her previous post about a bridal gown mood board.
The Footloose actress wrote, "I narrowed it down to my top five bridal personalities and created a mood board for each style using various dresses, accessories and other items." It sounds like this talented starlet should include wedding planning on her impressive resume!
Reasons why we think the gorgeous blonde would make a perfect winter bride? Her glam style on Dancing With the Stars is impeccable, not to mention the little side detail that she can pull-off literally any gorgeous gown, and the way she wears that five-plus carat, oval-cut, Lorraine Schwartz diamond ring is flawless. Just imagine how it would sparkle against the white winter snow!

If this talented bride-to-be opts for a wintery bridal escape, then she will be among the elite few who have managed to pull-together the perfect flurry of frosted wedded magic. Celebrities like Solange Knowles and Alan Ferguson, Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden, and Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, are all duos that have chosen to tie-the-knot in the chic winter months. The most recent celebrity winter wedding was that of the gorgeous pair, Sofia Vergara, and Joe Manganiello, who managed to turn their November nuptials into an blooming oasis of swoon worthy Instagram snapshots.

Wedding guest charged in Waldorf shooting

The drunken wedding guest who accidentally fired a handgun at a Waldorf-Astoria reception was finally charged Tuesday with two felony counts for the June melee.
“It wasn’t me. I’m not a criminal. I ripped my pants getting out of the cab,’’ klutzy liquor-store owner Vladimir Gotlibovsky lied to a worker at the storied hotel as he tried to get away, according to police statements revealed at his Manhattan arraignment.
But cops quickly nabbed Gotlibovsky, 42, of Brighton Beach, in the bizarre incident, which left four people injured.
Gotlibovsky wasn’t indicted until recently because investigators had trouble getting witnesses to cooperate, authorities said.
He was charged with felony criminal weapons possession and tampering with evidence, as well as six counts of misdemeanor assault.
Gotlibovsky’s older brother Felix, 51, was hit with the same felony charges for allegedly helped him hide the gun after the shooting.
Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said both men are also being investigated by state tax and finance authorities “for liquor smuggling.”
Vladimir owns a liquor store in Eastchester in The Bronx. He told cops he carries a gun for protection.
Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley set a $50,000 bond or $25,000 cash bail for both men. He allowed them to leave for the night and return Wednesday morning to post it.
Vladimir had been partying during a booze-fueled pre-wedding-reception cocktail hour at the hotel when the legal 9mm Ruger he was carrying in his pocket went off.
The bullet shot through his pants and ricocheted off the marble floor, grazing a female guest’s head. Vladimir injured his leg in the shooting, and three other people were hurt by flying marble, tile and glass shards.
Authorities say Vladimir panicked amid the ensuing mayhem and as cops descended on the scene slipped the gun to his brother, who then allegedly turned it over to their mother.
The mom then gave it to Vladimir’s wife, who went home and locked it in the family safe, authorities said.

The incident occurred after bride Anna Goldshmidt was married but before her dream million-dollar reception could take place. She is suing the Waldorf for canceling the reception because of the shooting.

Wedding loans, anyone?

Exploring new avenues for credit growth, finance companies seem to have landed an enterprising model of offering wedding loans. As the marriage season rings in, customers too are queuing up for theseloans to ensure the pomp for the dream event of their loved ones.
Non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) like Tata Capital have taken the lead in introducing a new category of loans specifically for weddings. These loans, much like your personal loans, are short -term unsecured loans with an average ticket size of anything from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 15 lakh, based on your borrowing capacity.
"The wedding loan market is in the nascent stage in the country," says SKV Srinivasan, executive director, retail, IDBI Bank. However, the potential is huge. "The wedding loan market in Mumbai alone is estimated to be around Rs 500 crore to Rs 700 crore," says Srinivasan.
Despite the huge market for wedding loans in the country, until recently, they were not treated as a separate category of loans.
Traditionally, banks and NBFCs would offer personal loans that could be used for any purpose. Typically, personal loans are mainly used for emergencies like illness or to arrange for the cash component during a home purchase, or at times, for home repairs or for events like weddings. Of all these reasons for taking a personal loan, weddings top it by far, says Anuradha Rao, CGM, personal banking, SBI.
"Of our personal loan portfolio of Rs 40,000 crore, a significant portion would be used to finance wedding expenses," says Rao. "Typically, for persons who are 50 and above, the main reason for taking a personal loan is the wedding of their children," she adds.
"Getting married is a key milestone in an individual's life and is one of the main reasons for taking a personal loan. Recognizing this need, Tata Capital crafted the Wedding Loan product to provide prospective brides and grooms with the ability to finance their dream wedding, to make his or her wedding even more special," says Govind Sankaranarayanan, COO, retail business & housing finance, Tata Capital. The wedding loan is available at an interest rate between 13%-19%, depending on the borrower's eligibility.
The wedding loan was launched in the first week of October through an association with the movie Shaandaar as its story revolved around a wedding. "We received a good initial response for our Wedding Loans product,'' says Sankaranarayanan.
Increasingly, weddings are like a three to five day gala event. "At Rs 20 lakh for an average wedding, India is more expensive,'' says Suresh Sadagopan, founder, Ladder7 Financial Advisories.
Wedding loans help in meeting only a part of the wedding expenses. The huge spends for a wedding require long-term financial planning. "If your child is young, then the investment horizon is 15 year plus for a wedding fund. The investment pattern in saving for a wedding is no different than if you were saving for your retirement,'' points out Arvind Rao, chartered accountant.
"We have seen people using SIP to create a corpus for the long term. Besides, they also invest in Gold Mutual Funds and Gold ETFs thorugh SIP so as to accumulate gold for the marriage of their children,'' says Himanshu Vyapak, deputy CEO, Reliance Capital Assets Management.

"If a person invests Rs 10,000 through monthly SIPs for 15 years, he would end up investing a total of Rs 18 lakhs. This would grow to Rs 63 lakhs if one had invested in Nifty and even more if one invests in an active fund,'' points out Vyapak.

Top 5 wedding planning myths

As wedding planners, we’ve had the opportunity to be part of a wide spectrum of big days, from informal outdoor soirees to formal hotel galas. We’re firm believers that your wedding should be what you want it to be, instead of what you think it should be – it’s your wedding after all.
We’re also advocates of a well-planned event, no surprise there. So to help you with your preparation we thought we’d share five of the biggest myths when it comes to wedding planning.
1. A wedding planner is not worth the money
You are probably reading this thinking that we’ve simply included this one as a ploy to get you to work with us. While it’s in our best interest to convince you to do so, we honestly and genuinely feel like working with any planner is going to be a huge asset to the organization of your event, and will save you a lot of stress in the process. Not only that but working with a planner can actually save you time and money along the way.
2. You have to wear a white wedding dress
If a traditional white wedding dress isn’t your thing then don’t wear one, it’s a simple as that. You’ll find that wedding gowns come in all shades: pink, red, blue and even black. We’ve also seen traditional veils be replaced with fascinators, headbands and floral crowns more than ever the last few years. Beyond wedding gowns, designers like Elie Saab and Monique Lhuillier have inspired jumpsuit and two-piece bridal attire, so don’t be afraid to go a little more fashion forward with your bridal style if you don’t see yourself in a traditional ball gown.
3.You must include all wedding traditions
Speaking of tradition, from something old to something blue to a first dance and bouquet toss in between, we often get asked by our clients what wedding traditions they should include. We always encourage our brides and grooms to embrace the traditions they like and ignore the ones they don’t. Heck, it’s your wedding so feel free to create your own traditions that are meaningful to you and your family and friends.
4. Friends make suitable replacements for professional vendors
Just because your BFF’s Instagram game is on point doesn’t mean they are a qualified wedding photographer that knows instinctively what shots need to be taken. The same goes for that friend that insists she’s a contouring pro based off of a dozen how-to videos she’s watched on YouTube. You get the idea. We’re not saying your friends aren’t talented, but counting on them for one of the most important days of your life isn’t a great idea. Plus what if you’re not happy with the result? Awkward. If money is a concern, source professionals that can work within your budget.
5. DIY weddings are always more cost effective

Speaking of saving your budget, DIY is well…do-it-yourself, meaning that you actually need to anticipate the amount of hours you’ll need to spend on each project, not to mention the amount of materials required to bring it to fruition. Sometimes DIY projects are not as cost effective as you think. Our recommendation is to always do your research before attempting anything! You may be better off limiting yourself to a couple simple DIY projects and letting a professional decorator handle the rest.

Caregivers go the extra mile to get resident to wedding

In life, there are few once in a lifetime experiences and even fewer that you want to miss. Thanks to caring and concerned caretakers at Park Centre in Newton, Bob Stanley did not have to miss one of his.
Stanley has only one granddaughter, Kayla, and she was getting married. The wedding was in Aplington and his family was hoping that he would be able to attend.
“I was in a care conference with his son and daughter when his son, Dave, inquired if his dad could handle coming to the wedding,” director of nursing Jennifer Flake said. “We briefly discussed options of what we could do to help his dad see his granddaughter in her wedding dress and her important day. We considered her coming to the facility for pictures prior to the wedding.”
After the discussion, Flake along with Sheree Esqueda began brainstorming how they could get Stanley, 89, to the wedding. Stanley has been a longtime resident at Park Centre and during his time there the staff has developed a bond with his family.
“Sheree and I developed a plan on how we could get him to the wedding with the assistance from our husbands,” Flake said.
They started to prepare him weeks in advance by discussing his granddaughter’s wedding.
“Bob would smile ear to ear talking about the wedding. The discussion helped him reminisce about his own wedding. He shared beautiful memories of his own wedding,” Flake said.
Preparations continued and finally the day, Nov. 14 had arrived.
“The trip was long but Bob was very vibrant and the best that he has been in months,” Flake said.
Flake said that Stanley was able to stay through the entire wedding and that he enjoyed the pictures and the whole experience.
“It was wonderful. I had a very good time,” Stanley said. “It was a beautiful wedding, hundreds of people, a lot of color. She is a beautiful little girl. We had a good day.”
“He was so engaged in the day,” Flake said.

This was not the first time Park Centre took the extra step and assisted their residents in attending important events. Flake said that in the past they have assisted a resident to travel to Fort Dodge to visit her dying daughter. They also helped the resident and her dear friend attend the daughter’s funeral.

Weddings at the Wedding Bowl

The Wedding Bowl — credited as La Jolla’s most sought-after park for weddings — is getting some much-needed attention at the hands of the Whale View Point Enhancement Project. Already a popular venue for saying “I Do,” the Wedding Bowl improvements are intended to make the area that much more desirable. La Jolla Light looked into some of the steps involved in celebrating one’s special day there.
The Whale View Point project is run under the auspices of La Jolla Parks & Beaches advisory group, which assumed management of the Whale View Enhancement Project in April 2014 from the La Jolla Conservancy.
The project features many tasks for improving the coastal area along the 300-500 blocks of Coast Boulevard, on one of which sits the Wedding Bowl. Partnering with Boy Scout Troop 506 and sister club Venture Crew 506, Whale View Point organizers recently cleaned out the dead overgrown vegetation to reveal the cobblestone wall. The palms trees at the Wedding Bowl also were trimmed recently. Going forward, the area will be re-vegetated with new drought-resistant plants.
Also referred to as Cuvier Park, the ocean-facing plot across from the Museum of Contemporary Art La Jolla location, the Wedding Bowl fits 40 people for ceremonies. Receptions are not allowed at the site.
Rev. Christopher Tuttle — who owns the domain for theweddingbowl.com — said he created the site as a step-by-step guide to having a ceremony at the panoramic landmark, and began officiating weddings there in the 1990s. To date, Tuttle’s ministry has performed more than 1,500 weddings at the Wedding Bowl.
“It’s one of the most beautiful locations in the world,” he said. “You have the Pacific Ocean right there and the crashing waves can’t be beat.” The only downsides, he said, are that there are no restroom facilities on site, glass containers are prohibited, there can be no amplified music and no electricity.
Tuttle does not profit from anyone using the site, but he does recommend his ministry Vows from the Heart to officiate. Using Vows from the Heart is not required for having a ceremony there. “Establishing the site was my way of answering questions for couples without selling anything,” he said. “As soon as you say the word ‘wedding’ costs start to go up, and as soon as you get a wedding planner, costs go up, so this is a guide for brides who want to plan the event themselves.”
He noted the very first thing that needs to be done for a wedding at the Wedding Bowl is for a city permit to be obtained for lawful gathering on public land. “When you send us an e-mail, the very first question is ‘Do you have a permit?’ and if the answer is ‘No,’ we can’t do anything,” Tuttle said.
San Diego Park & Recreation district manager Dan Daneri reported permits issued are limited to one per day, per area, for a maximum of four hours. In 2014, 197 permits were issued for weddings at the Wedding Bowl site. Thus far into 2015, only 94 have been issued.
The city issues permits for weddings in city parks one year in advance. Or, for those hoping for a quick ceremony, permits are available the first working Monday for any available dates that month. The San Diego Permit Center can be reached at (619) 235-1169, for fee information. Daneri said all City of San Diego park-use permit fees, including wedding permits, are deposited into the General Fund.

Should more than one party request to have its wedding at the Wedding Bowl on the same date, the names go into a lottery, facilitated through the Balboa Park Administration Building, 2125 Park Blvd.

Matt Damon Celebrates His 10th Wedding Anniversary: Why the Actor Talking About Marriage Is One of Our Favorite Things!

Thank you, Matt Damon, for this glorious decade of marriage.
Oh, not our marriage to him (the one-sided terms of which will remain private), but the star of The Martian is celebrating his 10th wedding anniversary with wifeLuciana Barroso today—and let us be the first to congratulate them on their relatively dull 10 years.
And we mean that in the best way possible, because too much excitement tends to not be a harbinger of success for most Hollywood unions.
Instead of providing tabloid fodder and knowing nods around the virtual water cooler, Matt and Luciana just met-cute in 2003 (she was tending bar in Miami, where he was filming a movie), tied the knot two years later in a private civil ceremony and have been happily busy raising their four girls—their daughters together, Isabella, Gia and Stella, and Alexia, from Barroso's previous marriage—and maintaining a relatively stable life as Damon's career has steadily skyrocketed.
With the big 1-0 approaching, Damon told E! News at The Martian junket, "She's hung in there with me for 10 years, so she deserves a medal or something."
The 10th anniversary does happen to be tin, traditionally—but perhaps better for all involved, a more modern approach in the U.S. these days for the Tin Anniversary is the gift of diamonds.
Anyway, we have total faith that he figured it out in time. But the reason we harbor such jolly feelings for the couple also has everything to do with the things Damon has said about his wife and family over the past 10 years.
Pressed to comment on how his buddy Ben Affleckwas doing this summer in the wake of his split from Jennifer Garner after 10 years, Damon deftly deflected attention from his pal and sent an extra compliment Barroso's way. "I think marriage is insane," he told Entertainment Tonight. "It's a crazy idea but I love being married to my wife. So I wouldn't tell anybody else about their relationship. But I'm lucky I found my wife. And I guess maybe, if there's any secret … it's to feel lucky.
The couple even renewed their vows two years ago and it didn't leave us with a pit of dread in our stomachs.
• How do they make it work when Damon is always needed here and there all over the world to film those movies of his? They have the scheduling thing down, of course--plus they make the most of it, such as when the whole fam joined him in South Africa for an educational vacay while he shot Invictus. "We have a two week rule," he explained to Your Tango. "I'm not away for more than two weeks. I think you need to be with the person you love as much as possible. My wife is my soul mate. I don't like being apart from her."
• Damon counts his blessings because perhaps no one was more surprised than he was when he finally met Mrs. Right. "I remember thinking, in my early 30s, that I wouldn't [get married], you know?" he reflected to The Hollywood Reporter in September. "I didn't think it was going to happen for me. My brother found his soul mate very young; he'd just turned 26 when they were married. He'd been married for 10 years by the time I even met my wife, and I looked at this really happy, wonderful marriage and kind of went, 'I guess that's not going to happen for me.' And then it did."
• He takes every opportunity to give the ladies in his life kudos—even, er, rocking that ponytail was a reason to recognize. "I now have a whole new appreciation for my wife and daughter," Damon told the L.A. Times about managing longer hair. "It's very hard to do."
And obviously Luciana supports him regardless of follicle status...
• Damon is grateful not to do the dual-Hollywood grind. Regarding his low-drama marriage, he told The Guardian in 2013, "A lot of it boils down to luck: my wife's a civilian and that takes a lot of pressure off. It's really sex and scandal that moves those magazines, and there's nothing scandalous about a guy who's married and has kids. If they come outside where I live, they are going to die of boredom—there's just nothing really going on that would sell a magazine."
Oh, we have a feeling the inside story of their romance would sell plenty of magazines, but we'll just take Matt and Lucy as they are.

Happy anniversary, you two—and many more.

Man chased and gunned down in Brooklyn; Staten Island man shoots girlfriend's relatives in separate incident

A 68-year-old man who had just attended a wedding in Brooklyn was chased and fatally shot three times by a gunman still on the run, police said Tuesday.
Yingguan Chen, dying from gunshots to the head, chest and forearm, barged into a Popeyes Chicken on Seventh Ave. in Sunset Park Monday night after being blasted on nearby 61st St., police and witnesses said.
“Somebody help me! Call the police! Call the police!” he yelled, according to a manager at the fast food joint who heard details from a colleague.
“One of the customers ran over to the counter and grabbed a bunch of napkins. He was telling the guy, 'Sit down! Sit down!’” said the manager, who refused to give his name.
A police source said Chen also told the workers in Mandarin “he was going to die.”
Chen was pronounced dead at 10:03 p.m. at Lutheran Medical Center.
On Tuesday a bloody handprint remained on the eatery’s door.
Surveillance video from the fast food joint captured a cowardly criminal wearing a black trenchcoat and pink hat discarding the .22-caliber pistol he used in the heinous execution, police sources said.
The victim, who had no criminal record, had earlier attended a wedding at the nearby Golden Imperial Restaurant, police said.
Chen’s wife told police she knew of no reason why her husband would be gunned down.
In a separate incident on Staten Island, a man moving out of his girlfriend’s home shot and wounded her brother and nephew who tried to intervene in a dispute, police said.
Cops said Edward Garrins — who was still at large — flipped out after Sheila Holmes confronted him about what he planned to take with him as he moved out Monday night.
Holmes fell as the confrontation got physical, and her 15-year-old nephew and 37-year-old brother — who had been playing video games downstairs — rushed to help, according to sources.
That’s when Garrins pulled a .45-caliber gun from his waistband and opened fire, striking the 15-year-old in the right shoulder and hitting the dad, Anthony Jewell, in the left arm, according to sources.

Garrins has an open warrant for failure to appear in court for a disorderly conduct charge and has 11 prior arrests, including for assault, robbery and possession of a loaded gun, police said.

My wedding day was the happiest of my life. Why did it have to be outside Australia?

11 November 2015 was the greatest day of my life.
I married the love of my life, my soul mate, my best friend and the man I will spend the rest of my life with – Liam Davis.
Liam and I would often giggle with each other at married couples and we found it a past time to make fun of those annoying couples who just couldn’t wait to tell you they were hitched.
That was until recently when we tied the knot in Carmel, California, on the beach with just our English bulldog Poppy as our witness.
Something surreal happened. While standing on the beach and looking into my husband’s eyes, I realised just how incredible it all was. We stood in front of each other and committed ourselves to one another for the rest of our lives. We told each other how much we loved each other and how much we meant to each other.
We cried and laughed and hugged and kissed. We made it official. We got married.
Not a civil ceremony. Not a commitment ceremony. A marriage. We got married.
After the ceremony we walked down the beach with our wedding photographer, Catie Watkins, and were greeted by local Carmelians who wished us well and said our ceremony was beautiful.
This was the greatest day of our lives, but one we had to have thousands of miles from our home city, Sydney.
And why? Because the government of Australia is ignoring basic human rights. The majority of Australians find it baffling why our politicians blatantly refuse to realise that marriage equality is consistent with Australia’s slogan of “a fair go”.
It’s heartbreaking to me that the all-too-familiar “We are one, but we are many” song is thrown into the cosmos at every event that calls for patriotism, yet that song to me is a blatant lie. The current government doesn’t see us all “as one”. Quite the opposite.
A plebiscite has been in talks for a while now which is set to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on an answer that has already been discovered.
Seventy-two per cent of Australians want marriage equality. Every scientific poll conducted in the last nine years has shown majority support for equality.
Yet why is the government not listening?
My wedding day was the happiest day of my life.

I married the love of my life, my soulmate, my best friend and the man I will spend the rest of my life with. It’s high time to government recognises the value of this as much as I do.

What Makes A Wedding Truly Spectacular

We just went to a wedding and I am excited to share what I call "the happening"! My husband Shelly and I didn't know what to expect as we drove to Bloomington, Indiana to attend the wedding weekend at the University of Indiana of our grandson Logan to his love, Annie.
We had never been to an out of town wedding that took place at a university. We imagined the guest list would be made up of college professors from the small university town and business people from the big city of Chicago and friends of Logan and Ann. Shelly and I wondered if the bride and groom's ceremony would be civil or religious. We wondered who would officiate ... a Justice of the Peace, a Rabbi and a Priest or one or the other? Why did we wonder?
We wondered because our granddaughter to be is Korean and Catholic and our grandson is Caucasian and Jewish! Wouldn't you wonder, too?
This is the conversation Shelly and I had on our drive home after the weekend wedding festivities...
"Shelly, I felt everyone left the wedding feeling like a 'community'! I know I did."
Shelly responded, "I had your same feeling; the event was a love-in."
You see darlings, Annie and Logan's wedding was different then any I have attended, not because she is Korean and he is Caucasian, not because she is Catholic and he is Jewish, but because...
It was the PEOPLE that made Ann and Logan's wedding over-the-top perfect. The abundance of happiness and the expressions of joy on everyone's face stand out in my mind. The guests were a mix of America ... big city and college town, professors and business people, different faiths, young and old. The 200 people were so warm to one another and absolutely fit like a "glove". It wasn't anything about the flowers, food and decor that made Logan and Ann's wedding special. It was the families and friends ... the PEOPLE.
Logan and Annie graduated from Indiana University. He met Annie, whose family is from Bloomington. After graduating from the school of business, Logan decided to make his home in the small college town because he fell in love with Ann ... and her incredible family.
Ann's parents Bill and Karen have two natural born sons. When Karen learned she could not have more children and wanted a daughter they decided to adopt a little Korean girl. They did not stop at one! They adopted 10 more Korean children -- eight girls and two boys! These wonderful parents raised 12 outstanding children. My daughter-in-law Jami, Logan's mom, describes the parents in this way when I asked Jami about their religion: "I think they are Irish Catholic but personally Honey, I think of them as Saints!" Now that I know them I wish we could clone people to be like Bill and Karen!
Ann's father, Bill, is a law school professor in the Law School at the University of Indiana and an expert witness for the courts of law. His wife, Karen, is from New York and grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. Though not Jewish, she brought the tradition of Judaism into their family home for Logan. The parents call Logan, "my son".
Logan has two brothers, Scott and David, a wonderful mother; his father, Steven, is deceased. He has a multicultural family through Shelly's marriage to me because I already have an Israeli son-in-law whose heritage is Iraqi, and a Persian (Iranian) grandson through marriage to one of my granddaughters, and now, Annie! Logan now has 30-plus cousins and wonderful aunts and uncles, plus his Honey and Papa. So even before the weekend events began the two families had interesting backgrounds.
The wedding took place at the University of Indiana Alumni Hall Hotel and student center. The building has old-world décor and is castle-like.
"Let the festivities begin", I thought to myself as Shelly and I went downstairs for the rehearsal dinner.
After dinner, Jami raised her glass to toast Annie and Logan and invited family and friends to say a few words. The room was still ... people were shy. Suddenly toasts picked up! I wish I could have recorded the words. They were hysterically funny, witty, totally loving and warm and the night ended on a high note with strangers now becoming friends and hugging one another good night. The mood was set for the wedding.
The bride and groom's choice to perform their nuptials was perfect. They choose, Mark, a lawyer, one of the best friends of the Good family who was granted permission by law to perform the wedding ceremony. Not a stranger, like a Justice of the Peace; not a Priest or a Rabbi or both. "A perfect meeting of the minds," I thought to myself and smiled.
Moments before the ceremony began seven of us were handed a piece of paper that had a written wish for the bride and groom. Individually we were called to the microphone to read our saying. Looking out into the room at the seated guests as I read my wish I noticed smiles. "Happy wishes make happy people," I remember thinking.
Mark performed the ceremony as only Mark would. It was heartfelt, warm and short.
Logan wore his late father, Steven's, tallis (meaning "to cover" in Hebrew), a prayer shawl that his grandfather, my husband Sheldon Good, draped over his grandson's shoulders as the young couple stood under the Chuppah, a canopy under which a Jewish ceremony is performed. With tears running down my darling husband's weathered cheeks, but with his wonderful red-framed glasses still creating a happy aura, he gave his grandson to his new granddaughter, Annie.
Dinner was magical in the old wood paneled ballroom. Bill, Annie's dad, made an Irish toast and asked his daughter for the first dance! Father and daughter whirled and twirled around the dance floor, both laughing with joy. Then Logan and Jami did the most incredible dance called the "chicken dance" that they made up when Logan was a little boy! Everyone in the room laughed and cheered them on. Dancing to the uplifting sound of the band lasted until late into the night.
Sunday morning, we all met for brunch. Shelly and I noticed round tables all over the room. We did not think twice about where we should sit. "Anywhere would be just perfect," were the words that went through my mind. Because the faces in the room were no longer unfamiliar! We had become a bonded group and I was so happy for this grandson of mine, Logan Good, who lost a father to suicide and now would forever have added stability with his new family; along with peace and love.
And I felt happy for Annie because she is now part of our huge, blended, interesting, loving and multi-faceted family.

And I felt blessed for Shelly and me, and Jami, Scott and David (Logan's brothers), and all the rest of our family because we have added Annie's family to ours and I know they have added us to theirs. We are a community!