My parents’ wedding album is, by any standards, a treasure. Leather-bound eggshell white, photo sleeves edged in stitched piping, it pretty much took a shelf of its own in a small foyer closet mostly for sheets and towels. Pulling it down was something I could never take lightly: it was an investment in time, going through the photographs, beginning to end, enamored in a way by the prince and princess who would become my mother and father. She was gorgeous, elegant, smiling. He was handsome, dapper, clearly in love.

Takes a certain kind of bride to want a snowball wedding—her bridesmaids all in white, like her. It was November 1948, she was barely twenty-one. From the first pages of the album, a satin doll posed at a vanity in my grandparents’ Brooklyn apartment, to the ceremony and celebration in what seems a grand ballroom, there’s an intoxicating splendor to it all. Not to mention the cheap thrill of recognizing even a small number of relatives and friends in a younger incarnation. We’re talking solid working class, whatever resources it took to do it up with style.

My own wedding album is of a more makeshift variety, put together by yours truly. No bridesmaids, though the ceremony was traditional by Jewish standards. It was November 1984, I was a few weeks shy of thirty-five. I’d been seeing the man I would marry for about a year and a half. I liked the sound of doing something life-affirming in an otherwise auspicious year. Here’s how the marriage proposal went:

Setting: an Upper East Side studio with a panoramic view looking north (and in which everything, from the colors to the lighting to the custom-designed furniture, speaks to the interior-design brilliance of its occupant).

She says, I think it’s time for us to do something . . .

He says, You mean like get married.

She nods. Yes.

He says, Okay. After which her nerves get the best of her and she goes into the bathroom to throw up.

Within months we’d chosen a venue in downtown NYC , a club/ballroom designed to evoke La Belle Epoque. No wedding planner, just the two of us making all the arrangements—catering, music, flowers, invitations. I had no interest in a formal wedding gown. And even if years on my own made me feel a little awkward about the notion of being ‘given away,’ I took it in stride—pleasurably so—when my mother and father walked me to the Chuppah. It was a grand day, on every level.

 

Yes, coming of age in the ‘Sixties can do a little something re: a woman’s consciousness when it comes to career/marriage/family. I’d pretty much lost contact with high school friends, and of those I was closest with, only two married in their early twenties. I made my bridesmaid’s dress for one wedding—a jumpsuit—ice blue satin, fitted bodice with soft, flowing pants, which, for all practical purposes, looked like a gown. The bride did not like the idea of pants. These were pure palazzo, so wide I could loosely stitch the inseam of each pant leg together and no one would ever know.

Weddings of post-college friends are what I remember most, few and far between as they were.

By the time this year comes to an end, my daughter, in contrast, will have attended four weddings. Last weekend it was Aspen, a camp friend’s wedding. She was a bridesmaid. A few weeks earlier it was New York, a high school friend’s wedding. October and November bring her back East again. Clearly the wear and tear (traveling long distances for short weekends), coupled with pressure (money spent on air fare, dresses, shoes, bachelorette parties, wedding presents), is no match for the need/desire to be at a best friend’s wedding. Besides which, isn’t there something binding about rituals and rites of passage? And doesn’t friendship itself have a new face in a world where BFFs are only as far from each other as their smartphones?