Scoring Sunday's Nuptials: Fighting the Law, and The Law's Hot Ivy League Lawyers
Don't fight commitment. Don't fight biological clocks, and don't fight the NYT's Weddings & Celebrations, who always win the battle over your inferiority complex. Don't fight Gawker Weddings Expert Phyllis Nefler, either. But what happens when Vows fights The Law?
According to Slate's Mickey Kaus, one "iron law" of journalism is that "anytime a reporter says a person is funny and gives an example, the example won't be funny." He calls this the "Law of Curated Humor." And I got to thinking about it because: today? Vows fought the law and the law won.
Witness this happy tale of the inception of a marriage:
Ms. Weinstein and Mr. Goldich met in June 2006 at a Manhattan bar in which he was performing [stand up comedy]. That night, he tossed out a rhetorical question to the women in the audience.
"It was something like, ‘You girls know what it's like when you go out with a guy and he doesn't call you afterward,' " Mr. Goldich recalled. Rather than nod her head, as other women in the audience had, Ms. Weinstein, a comedy club newbie who was sitting in the second row, blurted out: "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Ms. Weinstein explained, "I meant it to mean that what he was talking about had never happened to me."
Mr. Goldich was a bit rattled by her outburst, but also admitted to being impressed. "Generally, when you're on stage, you don't want people interjecting and ruining the moment," he said. "But I thought that Robyn's response was a funny and astute comment."
Jesus, what!? It will not shock you to know that the announcement's kicker is "…and he has been making me laugh ever since." No. I'll cut Matt Goldich a lil slack cause he's a staff writer for Letterman and I love me some Letterman, but anyway, the point is that now that you know about the Law of Curated Humor you will never be able to un-know it.
Goldich went to Brown, as did fellow groom David Stern, who met Sondra Goldschein through some wedding planning emails in advance of the nuptials of her cousin to his buddy. The emails grew increasingly saucy until finally Stern asked her out on Valentine's Day, obis.
The article then goes on about how they kept the relationship a deep dark secret, yada yada, and how finally they had to "lift the veil" (groan) because she was the Maid of Honor and he was a groomsman in the wedding and "questions mounted about whether they would bring a date to the event." And I could not for the life of me figure out why so secretive and then finally it hit me when I noticed two sentences:
"Ms. Goldschein, 36, is keeping her name."
"Mr. Stern, 28, is in his fourth year of medical school."
Ah. Whatever, mazel!
These little girls (the middle one is clearly writing out "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" in Crayon on her placemat) are at the basement potluck wedding reception of Ming-Yi Chuang and Alan McIntyre, who met through an oddly compelling-sounding performance movie thing in which audience members get to shout out strings of words that become movie titles and then one of them is randomly drawn out of a hat to star in said film.
And so it came to be: Alan McIntyre directed Ming-Yi Chuang in a movie in which she breaks up with a kumquat.
I don't know either.
Chuang's parents initially disapproved of McIntyre and his freelance income (smart) but the couple managed to win them over with their love; early last year "he proposed on Victoria Peak in Hong Kong."
Oh, and the couple made a sequel, and I am officially deeming "Kumquat II: Avocado" to be a top-3 movie sequel title right up there with "The Squeakquel" and "Electric Boogaloo." And OH MY GOD IT'S ON YOUTUBE.
All kidding aside, these people are weird and wonderful and their video on the Times website is, as they always are, adorbs.
Elsewhere, this bride works at "Home Box Office in New York." I mean, that's … HBO, right? Who even calls it "Home Box Office" anymore? Weird. Amusingly, she is a "director of media relations" there. Moving on, I feel like if I were a spinal neurosurgeon it would be hard for me to marry a plastic surgeon because I would constantly be making condescending jokes about it. "Oh, you have an eye lift today? Yeah, I am performing an anterior cervical fusion the side effects of which could lead to paralysis. What time's dinner?"
Anyway, while a number of grooms today went to Brown, Mark Bartkiewicz raised the alternative stakes "and received a master's degree in sociology with a concentration in gender and sexuality studies from the University of Amsterdam. And finally, I'm sorry to all you Southern ladies, because I know you love your bride-only photos, but they kind of make me feel uneasy particularly when "the bride's previous marriage ended in divorce, as did the bridegroom's."
Emily Scharfman, David Menchel
• The bride graduated cum laude from Yale and the groom magna cum laude from Penn: +11
• The couple met at law firm Latham & Watkins after having both received their law degrees from NYU: +3
• "The bridegroom's mother teaches Judaic studies at the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls … a part of the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach. His father is the principal of Yeshiva Har Torah, a private elementary school.": +3
• The bride's mother is an endocrinologist and her late father was a psychiatrist: +2
• The groom appears to be unemployed: -2
TOTAL: 17
• The bride is a lawyer and the groom works in leveraged finance: +2
• The bride graduated magna cum laude from Brown: +6
• The groom received a law degree and an MBA from Columbia; the bride merely studied law there: +10
• The brides parents are a research scientist and a lab assistant for the Mayo Clinic: +2
• The groom is from Australia, so I am imagining a hot Asian dude in a suit yelling into a phone about DEBT RATIOS with a sexy accent: +3
TOTAL: 23
Just goes to show: the law—be it of Mickey Kaus' Curated Humor or Hot Ivy League Lawyer couples—always wins. Always.