Page 333 - WhyAsInY

WHat’s in a naMe?
family. The black-tie wedding itself outdid any celebration that I had ever witnessed, with the possible exception of the one portrayed in Goodbye, Columbus. There was an enormous buffet, after which an African friend left, thinking that the meal, which was yet to begin, was over. There were, I think, five bridesmaids and five ushers, clad in yellow dresses from Henri Bendel and tuxedos, respectively. There were huge floral arrangements, and there were hearts of palm flown in from Florida, beef Wellington, rolling carts, champagne toasts, a four-foot- high wedding cake, over two hundred guests, the music of Herb Sherry, too many photographs taken by Valache Studios, a Viennese table, and the Sunday Times for departing guests. The bride looked beautiful, car- ried a bouquet of daisies, and opened the dancing with the groom with “An Affair to Remember” and the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four.” There was, of course, a well-choreographed and beautiful ceremony, prior to which I learned that a Jewish bride walks down the aisle to Felix Mendelssohn, not Richard Wagner, and that the bridegroom does not walk down the aisle but stands there, under the wedding canopy, the chuppah. This was fine with my mother, who believed that if the groom came down the aisle flanked by his parents, he looked as if he were being dragged to the chuppah, which I guess was often true. The high- light, other than Phyllis’s entry, the kiss, and the breaking of the glass, was Morris Margolies actually singing—very well, I might add—the Seven Blessings and delivering his charge, of which I recall only the closing lines.
At some point before the wedding day, Harry had taken me aside, and, with a sheepish grin on his face, he half-jokingly, half-seriously, asked me if I would consider changing my last name to Rebell.
The closing lines of the rabbi’s charge at the Rebell-Yaverbaum wedding: “What’s in a name? Everything!”
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