The Weddings & Celebrations section of the New York Times was particularly magical this week. Each featured marriage was like a beautiful fairytale come to life. Let’s take a look!
Caren Joy Raine and Joel Truex Camche were married on Friday evening at the Harvard Club in Manhattan. Bentley Kassal, a retired justice of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court, officiated.
Mrs. Raine-Camche, 62, retired as a sales representative in Manhattan for GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical company. She sold oncology drugs to hospitals. She graduated from New York University. She is a daughter of Murray Raine of Brooklyn, and the late Sydonia Raine. Mr. Camche, 75, is a lawyer in Manhattan. He graduated from Harvard, from which he also received his law degree. He is the son of the late Ruth and Isadore Camche, who lived in Brooklyn.
The bride’s previous marriage ended in divorce; the bridegroom was a widower.
The couple met in April 2001 on a blind date. Mr. Camche’s wife had died of lung cancer in November 2000, and by late March 2001, an old friend noted that he looked “miserable.”
“‘My girlfriend knows a lot of single women,’” Mr. Camche recalled his friend saying. “‘Whenever you think you’re ready, she’ll be happy to arrange an introduction to one or more.’”
Mr. Camche remembered saying he doubted he was ready but was willing to give it a try because he was, in fact, miserable.
A few days later, Mr. Camche received Ms. Raine’s telephone number.
Ms. Raine said Mr. Camche had been described to her as a very nice man who had been happily married for 40 years. She was also told that he had started running marathons when he was 50 and that he and a group of friends would pick a city to run a marathon, and then vacation there.
Still, she was not all that excited at the prospect of going out with him. “I was looking for someone 10 years younger than I am, not 10 years older,” Ms. Raine said.
But she agreed to meet him.
On their first date at an Upper West Side restaurant, Ms. Raine said she was struck by Mr. Camche’s good looks and charm. Over three hours, they discovered that they lived across the street from each other, knew some of the same people, and that their children had gone to the same Hebrew and elementary schools.
Ms. Raine was most impressed by Mr. Camche’s honesty. “He would tell you exactly about how he felt,” she said. “A lot of men are not that open at the beginning.”
In 2004, they bought an apartment together, mainly, he said, because Mr. Camche was spending so much time in Ms. Raine’s studio apartment.
In the fall of 2006, while helping her son prepare for his wedding the next spring, Ms. Raine began thinking about marriage. Before that, she said, “I cared more about the relationship than about marriage.”
When she brought up the subject with Mr. Camche, he said he was not ready. “He was honest about that,” she said. “I figured that when he wanted to marry, it would be for the right reasons.”
Last spring, the couple were sitting at their coffee table when Mr. Camche bent down.
“Is that a proposal?” Ms. Raine joked.
“No, I dropped something,” he said.
But he realized how important marriage was to her. The next day he called Ms. Raine’s father and told him that he and his daughter were going to “put the icing on the cake” of their relationship.
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Janice K. Mahon and Jeffrey D. DuFour were married on Thursday morning at the South Brunswick Municipal Center in South Brunswick, N.J. Mayor Frank Gambatese of South Brunswick officiated. Next Saturday, Judge William D. Cohen of the Vermont Superior Court will lead a marriage celebration at Tre Piani, a restaurant in Princeton, N.J.
Mrs. DuFour, 50, is the vice president for technology commercialization and a member of the executive committee of the Universal Display Corporation, a company in Ewing, N.J., that develops the technology used in computer monitors, cellphones and television sets. She is the general manager of the concern’s chemical business and responsible for corporate marketing and public relations. She graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and received an M.B.A. from Harvard.
She is a daughter of Allayne M. Whitcomb of Ormond Beach, Fla., and the late John B. Kremp Jr.
Mr. DuFour, 53, works in Princeton as a managing partner in the Hermes Group, an accounting and financial services consulting firm. He is also the chief executive of the Tillit Group, a firm in Princeton that advises people in fiduciary positions and also represents litigants in fiduciary matters. He graduated from Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I.
He is a son of Richard D. DuFour of Frisco, Tex., and the late Dolores A. Dohanish.
The bride’s previous marriage ended in divorce, as did the three previous marriages of the bridegroom.
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Mary Elizabeth Pitta and Jonathan Scott Adelson are to be married Sunday at Oheka Castle in Huntington, N.Y. Ralph T. Gazzillo, a supervising judge of the Superior Criminal Court in Suffolk County, will officiate.
The bride, 36, will take her husband’s name. She is a financial consultant at Riversville Capital in New York She graduated from the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University and received a law degree from Touro College. She is a daughter of Margaret and John Pitta of Vero Beach, Fla. The bride’s father retired from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; he was the resident agent in charge for Long Island as well as La Guardia and Kennedy airports. Her mother is a retired New York City police officer.
The bridegroom, 38, is a senior director in the federal tax practice division at Alvarez & Marsal, which specializes in corporate turnaround and restructuring, in New York. He is on the board of directors of Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, a nonprofit organization in Brooklyn. He graduated from Ithaca College and has a law degree from the New England School of Law and a master’s degree in tax law from Boston University.
He is the son of Karen and Robert Adelson of Lexington, Mass. The bridegroom’s mother, a real estate broker, is associated with Higgins Group Realtors in Lexington. His father is a consultant who specializes in check-writing software.
In May 2007, Ms. Pitta had just finished law school and was looking for a job. Her friend Kara Friedenberg suggested she send her résumé to Mr. Adelson. Nothing came of that, but by Memorial Day weekend Ms. Friedenberg had decided that Ms. Pitta and Mr. Adelson were an ideal match. Ms. Friedenberg called Mr. Adelson and left a message saying she had found the perfect woman for him, Ms. Pitta recalled.
Two days later, Mr. Adelson sent an e-mail message to Ms. Pitta, saying “I hear we’re soul mates — we should meet for a drink to talk about it.”
Ms. Pitta responded that he already had her résumé and references.
“I thought I was being funny,” she said. Instead, days of “radio silence” followed, she recalled.
When Ms. Friedenberg asked how it had gone with Mr. Adelson, Ms. Pitta recalled saying “something dismissive.”
Ms. Friedenberg immediately called Mr. Adelson, and was surprised to find him in Budapest. At that, Ms. Pitta took the phone and asked Mr. Adelson if he had received her e-mail message. He admitted that he had, but hadn’t bothered to reply. Instead of being put off by Ms. Pitta’s grilling, Mr. Adelson said he was intrigued by her “confident, let’s get to the bottom of this” approach.
After he apologized, they spoke for two hours. He asked if there was any way he could make up for what he had done. “You mentioned you’re going to Rome,” she said. “I bought a pair of gloves at the bottom of the Spanish Steps at a place called Sermoneta, and lost them. Black, medium.”
Ms. Pitta and Mr. Adelson made dinner plans for the day after he returned to New York.
When Mr. Adelson, who was jet-lagged and bogged down with a work crisis, arrived hours late at Ms. Pitta’s apartment he was greeted with silence. He then took a small box from behind his back, exclaiming, “But I brought gloves!”
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Nikoa Subrina Evans and Garrett Lee Hendricks were married on Saturday on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. The Rev. Sandra Robinson, an African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister, officiated at Frenchman’s Reef and Morning Star Marriott Beach Resort.
Mrs. Evans-Hendricks, 38, is an owner of N, a store in Harlem that sells men’s and women’s designer apparel, skin care products and accessories. She graduated from Stanford and has an M.B.A. from Northwestern. She is a daughter of Lenora Clark-Evans and Brinson Evans of Accokeek, Md. The bride’s father, who retired from the Air Force as a colonel, is a project manager in Washington at the Computer Sciences Corporation of El Segundo, Calif. Her mother works at the Pentagon, procuring goods and services as a director of an Army contracting office.
Mr. Hendricks, 37, is an actor in New York. In October, he played the title character in “By Oscar Micheaux,” a play based on the life of the black filmmaker produced by the Milk Can Theater Company in Manhattan. He had a role in a revival of Ed Bullins’s “The Taking of Miss Janie” last summer at the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, N.C., and in December 2006 at the Henry Street Settlement in New York. He graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
He is the son of Valerie Aiyeola of Washington and Frank Hendricks of Maplewood, N.J. The bridegroom’s mother retired as the sales manager for the mid-Atlantic region of Sony Music. His father is a salesman at the Home Depot branch in Bloomfield, N.J., and is an independent music marketing consultant in Maplewood.
The couple met in March 2005 at Bounce, a bar on the Upper East Side.
She was attracted to his “perfect smile” and beautiful eyes.
And she immediately felt a rapport with him, quickly noting that he came from a “strong, family-oriented background” that emphasized responsibility, qualities she admired in her father.
Mr. Hendricks liked her looks but was especially intrigued by her warm, engaging smile. After a few dates, Mr. Hendricks said he found himself doing things like planning picnics.
“I never wanted to have a picnic with somebody!” he said.
Ms. Evans said she had no master plan to lasso Mr. Hendricks, but took care to avoid crowding him.
“A lot of women put men on a leash and call 10 times a day,” she said. “I didn’t, even though I wanted to know where he was going and what he was doing.”
Still, about six months into their relationship there was a reckoning.
“I told him this is no longer casual for me,” she recalled saying. She told him that if he didn’t feel the same way they should go their separate ways.
Mr. Hendricks said he had “seen the signs coming — the little things she was willing to do,” he said. “If you’re paying attention, it’s not a total shock.”
They broke up, and for two weeks he mulled things over.
“I realized that I didn’t want just a casual relationship with her, or to be without her,” he said. “I thought, You’d better realize how amazing this woman is, and stop being a little boy.”
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Helena Thorsen Shanahan, a daughter of Kristi V. Shanahan and Edward J. Shanahan, both of Wallingford, Conn., was married on Monday evening to Adam Harris Schwartz, the son of Sally Schwartz of Manhattan and the late Joseph W. Schwartz. Rabbi Jon R. Haddon officiated at the Seymour St. John Chapel of Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, with the Rev. John P. Duffell, a Roman Catholic priest, participating.
The bride, 30, who is known as Nell, is keeping her surname. She is an ethics and religion instructor for juniors and seniors at the Brooklyn Friends School. She is studying for a master’s degree in social work at Yeshiva University. She graduated from Dartmouth and received a Master of Arts in religion from Yale Divinity School.
Her father is the headmaster of Choate Rosemary Hall, and from 1981 to 1991 was the dean of the College at Dartmouth. Her mother is a French and Italian teacher at the High School in the Community, a magnet school in New Haven. The bride is a stepdaughter of Sandra Podesta.
The bridegroom, 31, is a managing director of the First Manhattan Company, an investment management firm in Manhattan; he manages portfolios and does stock research. He graduated from Brown and has an M.B.A. from Columbia.
His mother is the principal of the Reece School, a private elementary school in Manhattan for students with special needs. His father was a psychiatric social worker at Lafayette High School in Brooklyn.
Ms. Shanahan’s first words to Mr. Schwartz at a party in Greenwich Village on Jan. 23, 2003, were: “Please tell me you are not another asset manager.”
“I had been meeting men all night who were asset managers,” she said, “and I thought, ‘Oh, God, not another.’” Indeed he was an asset manager, but she said, “I decided to give him a shot anyway because I was attracted to his kind and confident demeanor.”
After chatting for a few minutes, he told her that he was looking forward to attending the Buffett annual meeting.
“Oh, I love his music,” she responded. “Jimmy Buffett, right?” No, he meant Warren E. Buffett.
“This is a test I sort of give to see who I am dealing with,” Mr. Schwartz said. “She was very interesting and very intelligent, but her knowledge base was very different from mine.”
The next day he called her for a date. By the time they met again, he said, “She came armed with every data point about Warren Buffett.”
Ms. Shanahan was about to go on vacation in Miami, “And when I told him, he said, ‘That leaves us three nights,’ ” she recalled. “When he said that, I felt ‘wow.’”
Their romance had flourished for more than a year when she decided to go to Yale Divinity School. Wary of long-distance relationships, they considered breaking up. “We were pretty intense about my work and her studies, and she needed to be the best at Yale, not just average,” Mr. Schwartz said. “But she was too interesting, different and wonderful to have it any other way, so we stuck it out.”
After graduation last year, she moved into the apartment he had bought on the Upper West Side.
In February, Ms. Shanahan, who had learned as a teenager that she has epilepsy, suffered a grand mal seizure in the apartment. When she regained consciousness in an ambulance, she looked up and heard him reassuring her.
“I don’t think I have ever felt more scared but ironically more safe in my entire life,” she said.
Three months later she had another attack. She fell on a linoleum floor and required staples to reattach the skin that had torn off the back of her head.
“It was clear to me than that Adam had lived up to the wedding vow to honor and love your spouse through sickness and in health before we were even married,” she said. “Despite my ambivalence about marriage up until then, I knew I couldn’t let him go.”
The couple chose New Year’s Eve as their wedding date because, Ms. Shanahan explained: “We joke that we’re always home on New Year’s Eve watching ‘Law and Order.’ We thought it was about time to make plans.”
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Best of luck to you all.
