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Lea DeLaria, the actress-comedian, surveyed the group that had gathered on a latest Sunday night on the Damrosch Park band shell at Lincoln Center.
“A drag queen, three totally different non secular leaders, Broadway stars, the mayor and one loudmouth butch dyke,” she stated from the park’s stage to a whole lot of individuals. “Kids, that’s very New York.”
If the combination she described was attribute of the town, so was the rationale many had come to the performing arts campus in Manhattan that day: for alternative, particularly to participate in a mass wedding celebration for individuals whose weddings had been delayed or derailed due to the pandemic.
According to organizers, round 200 {couples} turned up for the free occasion, Celebrate Love: A (Re)Wedding, which was a part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City collection. Some wore formal put on together with white robes and fits, whereas others winked on the theme by donning tuxedo T-shirts and veils from Party City.
As famous by Ms. DeLaria, the night’s M.C., the occasion drew notable company as effectively, together with New York Mayor Eric Adams. Not one to miss a party, he took the stage as a band performed the opening notes of “New York, New York.”
“New York is invincible,” Mr. Adams stated in his remarks. “Nothing can ever destroy our spirit. Nothing can ever destroy our love for one another.”
The hourslong affair started with a nonlegal, symbolic ceremony, earlier than which occasion workers handed out bouquets and flower crowns to some revelers, whereas others received henna tattoos and posed for images beneath rainbow streamers and treetop lanterns.
After attendees took their seats, performers together with the actor Mario Cantone serenaded them with love songs. Interspersed among the many musical numbers had been blessings from Rabbi Matt Green of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn; Imam Khalid Latif, the manager director and chaplain on the Islamic Center at N.Y.U.; and the Rev. Jacqui Lewis, the senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan.
The ceremony concluded with a unification ritual, during which {couples} concurrently held up yards of pink, blue and yellow ribbon. Raising the ribbon in unison for some proved to be a logistical problem, however what number of weddings go off and not using a hitch?
For Hjordys Perez Matos, 35, who handles vogue partnerships at Instagram, and Marcus Moore, 36, who handles public determine partnerships at Meta, the hitch was the pandemic’s arrival months earlier than their authentic wedding ceremony date in the summertime of 2020. The two, who dwell in Upper Manhattan, postponed their nuptials for a few yr earlier than marrying on the First Congregational Church of Marion in Marion, Ala., his hometown, in May 2021.
When they heard concerning the (Re)Wedding, Ms. Perez Matos and Mr. Moore, who grew to become engaged at a Lincoln Center Midsummer Night Swing occasion in 2019, welcomed the possibility to have fun their marriage at a spot expensive to them and their love story. The venue’s “free and public programming has been a significant a part of our lives ever since we’ve been youngsters, actually, so it was undoubtedly one thing we needed to do,” Mr. Moore stated.
Kimberly Lawrence-Lopez, 28, and Jeffrey Lawrence-Lopez, 33, additionally stated their wedding ceremony plans had been upended when Covid set in. They had at first deliberate to wed on a cruise round Manhattan in May 2020, however canceled that occasion due to the pandemic and as a substitute had been married in a digital ceremony on Zoom on the identical date.
For their ceremony, the couple, who dwell in Queens, rented a home in Westhampton, N.Y., on Airbnb. Their solely in-person visitor was the bride’s mom. “Our officiant was on Zoom,” stated Ms. Lawrence-Lopez, who works as an assistant at a medical workplace. Her mom apart, “our company had been on Zoom,” she added.
Joining them at Lincoln Center, the place every couple was allowed two company, was Mr. Lawrence-Lopez’s mom, who had watched their nuptials on a display screen. He and his spouse appreciated the power to have fun their union along with his mom bodily current, or to “have this opportunity at normalcy,” as Mr. Lawrence-Lopez, a residential account manager at a real-estate firm, put it.
Though Neish McLean and Katisha Gloster, each 37, had been married earlier than the pandemic, they got here to the occasion for the same purpose. At their civil ceremony in Manhattan, in July 2018, they’d solely two company.
“We thought this is able to be only a actually nice expertise to have with different individuals,” Ms. Gloster, who works in increased schooling as a program manager, stated of the (Re)Wedding.
The couple, who dwell in Middlesex, N.J., additionally noticed it as a technique to renew their dedication to at least one one other, and as a second to replicate on the 13 years they’ve spent collectively since assembly in 2009. “We’re so grateful to have our love survive,” Mr. McLean, who works for a philanthropic group, stated.
Esther Friesner-Stutzman and Walter Stutzman, each 71, had been drawn to the occasion by the possibility at a vow renewal as effectively. Ms. Friesner-Stutzman, an writer of science fiction and fantasy books, and Mr. Stutzman, a school music professor, dwell in Madison, Conn., and had been married at Yale in December 1974.
In the years that adopted, they’ve recommitted to one another at a number of ceremonies, which have taken place at a science fiction conference, on Valentine’s Day in Times Square and on the now-closed 24 Hour Church of Elvis in Portland, Ore.
A lover of affection, Ms. Friesner-Stutzman stated she additionally attended “to see all people else being pleased.”
Indeed, pleased could be an apt technique to describe the temper on the ceremony and reception that adopted, throughout which some {couples} and their company danced on the plaza, kissing, laughing, dipping and spinning beneath a kaleidoscope of rainbow party lights and 1,300-pound disco ball suspended above them.
As for domesticate a contented relationship, Mr. Stutzman had some recommendation from his 47-year marriage.
“Tell one another you like one another day-after-day,” he stated. Then: “Don’t stroll out on an argument.”
