Sunday morning we slept and got take out from Murray The Sturgeon King a few blocks up on Broadway--excellent pickled lox and whitefish salad. We read the Times, and cabbed over to the Algonquin, where most of the guests were staying. It's been restored and is very clubby and elegant, like a wood-paneled men's club.

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We boarded a charter bus to take us to the Picnic House in Prospect Park for the ceremony.

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The bus dropped us outside the park, and it was just a short walk to a gorgeous mansion...only that was not the Picnic House.

We walked around the mansion and down a lovely path through the woods...

We walked some more, and finally, down a hill, there it was...the Picnic House! I felt like Sir Edmund Hilary at the top of Everest.

Outside there was a trampoline, and Josie was bouncing up and down by herself, with other kids, and with any adult who would join her.

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There were a few anxious and (for some) hopeful moments when Joanne's sister, Julie took to the trampoline in her décolleté evening gown. (Miss Finger is shouting at me now: "Michael! You cannot write that!") But Farklempt tells all, even the evil in his heart.

There were refreshing drinks of white wine, champagne, and lemonade.

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We went inside for the ketubah signing. This was a carefully planned wedding ceremony, drawing from tradition, with a choson's tisch and bedeken, embellished with innovations from today's world. It all came together beautifully. The rabbi, a spirtual and ethereal waif and wraith, began by inviting us all to join in a nigun.

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The ketubah was read aloud in English by Vic Gelb, a friend from Cleveland who had been married longer than anyone else in the room.

Both parties signed, v'hakol sharir v'kayam! (e tutto e fatto).
 
 

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Then Aaron veiled his betrothed, and Joanne draped a tallit on the shoulders of her husband.

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And then we all walked some more, down a hill to a meadow in the shade of some trees, to await the bridal procession and ceremony.