WEDDING

William with his father and sister

Frances with her father and mother         



                                                           









Last Thursday, July 7th, Jacob and Nellie and I flew to Philadelphia to attend the wedding of my niece, Frances Tate, to William Gardner.  The wedding was held at the home of the bride and groom in Swarthmore, a suburb of Philadelphia.  Tate and Gardner parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters and their children assembled at an Italian restaurant, Tre Scalia, on Friday evening for the rehearsal dinner.

The wedding ceremony was on Saturday afternoon at 4:00 in the back yard of the couple's home.  A few close friends of the bride and groom attended, but it was primarily a family affair for Tates and Gardners.
After the ceremony a reception dinner was held at a restaurant midway between Swarthmore and the city.
On Sunday morning a few members of both families had brunch with William and Frances at the Park Restaurant on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia.

Ceremony.  We have little of it left; the rites of passage with which we mark the transitions of our lives have eroded until only a few fragments remain.  But from these fragments a couple can create an experience uniquely their own, which is what Frances and Will did.  And in the process they provided their families with the opportunity to celebrate an emotional continuity that we only rarely pause to acknowledge.  Frances wore the wedding gown her mother had worn in a much more elaborate and traditional church wedding, and the album of photos from that wedding was on a coffee table in the living room.  All the careful choices, those that conformed to tradition and those that departed from it, preserved the essence of ceremony without cliche or triviality.