Brides and Grooms

Below is a small selection of the many Brides and Grooms in the book who dared to create their own brand of New American Weddings and were generous enough to allow us to share them.

Diana McSpadden and Rick Todd
If Diana McSpadden looked more like a wood nymph than a traditional bride, consider her wedding to Rick Todd on a mountaintop in Colorado. Married by their congregation of friends and family, rather than an officiate, the couple chose a ceremony that was scrupulously honest in its approach, its words and its promise. And they followed it up with a New American Wedding Reception—an outdoor barbeque supper under the bright blue sky of Vail.
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Sarah Morris and Jeffery Michaels
A movie poster announced their wedding on the stage of the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts where the bride and groom held their first date. And with Fred Astaire dancing on the screen behind them, Sarah and Jeffrey were married, dressed in shades of gray and blue to accommodate the projected images of black and white. They were surrounded by family, friends and their Harvard/Radcliff community in a ceremony that included original poems and readings of Robert Louis Stevenson. Every choice that they made, from the white tie he wore to the Good n' Plenty favors they offered guests, was personal, shared, creative and custom-fit to a New American Couple.
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Nic York and Matt Bogen
When Nic York tried on bridal gowns, they made her laugh; they were like costumes, she thought; bride's costumes! But what an idea—she'd wanted a masquerade ball all her life. Nic York and Matt Bogen had a masked ball of a wedding with the attendants in the costumes of their dreams: Rapunzel, Eve, Cleopatra, The Sugarplum Fairy and more storybook characters than you'd find in a child's library. The wedding was a dream come true.

The first exchange of rings was between Nic and her butterfly-dressed stepdaughter, and it came with a vow to always listen and to make time to shop together. These were not choices our mothers would have made. These are New American options.
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Fiona Gallahue and Retsu Takahashi
This New American Wedding combined the bride's Catholic-Celtic heritage with that of a Japanese-American-Buddhist groom, in a ceremony that managed to transcend the initial code of "do no harm and do not offend", to create a level of connection, celebration, and joy for all who attended. In a service where both Celtic blessings and Shinto rituals were exchanged, the lighting of the Unity Candle by the bride and groom's mothers spoke volumes about acceptance, transcendent love and the blending of cultures made possible by the great experiment of American life.
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Debbie and David Bane
Two grown-ups in their fifties found themselves facing a new marriage, but every part of the traditional ritual they reviewed, seemed wrong; right from the part where the bride and groom stand with their back turned to their families. The soon-to-be-Bain's knew they wanted to create a different kind of celebration.

David and Debbie re-cast the pageant to one in which they faced and introduced seventy-five members of their extended families; ex-mother-in-laws who were the grandmothers of their children, ex-brother-in-laws who remained their best friends. "This isn't a ceremony that commits Debbie to me", said David, "This is a ceremony that creates one larger family where two somewhat smaller groups once stood." And in that tiny church on that warm summer day, not a soul misunderstood the new meaning of "relativity" nor the goodwill and love that surrounded this New American Wedding.
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©2007 by MEIER