Susanne Nifong and Benjamin Baker Really Love Horses
The Weddings and Celebrations pages of the New York Times are where we go to feel bad about not being on the boards of charitable organizations or having 'IV' after our names. And also, today, where we go to feel bad that no one has ever proposed to us in the presence of a horse.
It was a well-curated mix of eclectic types in this week's weddings section. A numerically dyslexic poet and an Italian translator, an Internet entrepreneur and her investor whom she wooed with the words "because I want to make money", a Pulitzer-prize winning former WSJ reporter and Don Imus's personal assistant . In the end, it was down to Leonora Zilkha and Frank Williamson, who were married on Frank's family plantation, and a very horsey southern couple. If you know us, you know that horsey trumps all.
Susanne Nifong and Benjamin Baker: 29 points
- The couple was married by an Episcopal reverend: +1
- Susanne's parents own a dairy farm in Virginia: +1
- Ben is a Shakespearean actor: +1
- His father retired as the chairman and chief executive of Wachovia Corporation in Winston-Salem, the fourth largest bank in the U.S.: +5
- Ben and Susanne met at one of Ben's performances as Macbeth, set up by a couple whose daughter, Laine Satterfield, was one of Ben's former classmates, who subsequently invited Ben and Susanne to a barbeque at her family's horse farm where Ms. Nifong, an avid rider and fox hunter, keeps her horse, Elastic: +8
- For the added Laine Satterfield intrigue — who is this friend and former classmate of Ben's and why is she having her parents set him up on dates... surely there's more to the story here...: +3
- When Ben first met Susanne, he thought: "She had on this great little skirt. She was really assertive and had a great smile and really great legs.": +2
- At the barbeque they bonded over both having black labs: +3
- About a year post-bbq, he walked her into the barn, took both of her hands and dropped to one knee, proposing to her in front of Elastic and five other horses: +5