Anticipation

The bride visits our table

Saturday 6 October 2018 

             Here it is – the big day! Or rather – the big night! The wedding of Allison Heifetz and Jason Reuben is an evening affair. 6:30 p.m. Not at a synagogue, but rather at the Old Westbury Country Club. Could be posh.

            We get an introduction to the bride, groom, their families and their friends Friday night at the rehearsal dinner in this sprawling restaurant/dance club in Jericho called One North Mediterranean Soul . 

Aside from the long walk to the washrooms, One North is outstanding. We’re in a big, airy ballroom leading onto a bigger, airier terrace. The hors d’oeuvres are so good we don't want them to end (I could nosh all night on those little crab cakes). There’s a perfectly roasted piece of salmon on my dinner plate. And there’s never a long wait for the next beverage.

Also well-roasted before, during and after dinner are the bride and groom. Among the jokes on Allison by her friends are a few about the “wedding diet,” which obviously has paid off. She’s achieved the impossible – she’s thinner than her mom.

There’s no end of riffs on the groom and the relationship, which dates back to their unrestrained undergraduate days more than six years ago at Syracuse University. The line I remember best: “Pray for Jay.”

Though Jay is a stranger to me, I feel like I know him pretty well after all this testimony – his food preferences, his fondness for gossip, his addiction to Instagram and, since he grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, his fanatic devotion to the Redskins.

Meanwhile, I've been looking forward to encountering Allison’s cousin’s girlfriend. A former student journalist of the year in her native Minnesota, Lauren Dezenski has been covering Massachusetts politics online for Politico. She can comment with authority about Elizabeth Warren. I’m a fan.

Since she started a new gig just a week ago on the Internet side of CNN in Washington, D.C., I wondered if that might divert her away from this affair, but hey, she’s here. Monica points her out during the cocktail hour – wearing the only dress as red as the bride’s. We get to chat.

The happy couple