Back in Black

All dressed up 

Sunday 7 October 2018

The Old Westbury Golf & Country Club, venue for the black-tie wedding Saturday night of Allison Heifetz and Jason Reuben, has a storied history.

It was the summer estate of William Whitney, Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy, and he bred thoroughbred horses there. Lots of them. His son, Harry Payne Whitney, did, too. One of his steeds won the Kentucky Derby in 1915.

 Gloria Vanderbilt lived there in the 1930s. Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney inherited the place in 1942 and built a new mansion. When the estate became a country club in 1961, the mansion became its clubhouse.

You need a horse to get from the highway to that clubhouse. It takes us a while to find the right driveway to approach it, but we still arrive before the designated hour of 6:30, just in time to join a scrum of other black-tie and black-gowned guests in an upstairs vestibule.

Once inside the large room where the ceremony takes place, we’re delighted and overwhelmed by the floral theme of the evening. Grand bouquets of white roses flank the seating area and the Chuppah is a bower of white blossoms.

Leave it to me to panic at the thought, after we’re seated for a while in the fourth row, that I might not survive the upcoming rites without a visit to the men’s room.

Outside the door in the vestibule I run head-on into the processional, all lined up and ready to proceed. Sheepishly, I pass by and take a long walk down what seems like an endless hallway to fulfill my mission, returning only when the procession is complete.

From my new seat at the back of the room, it’s a lovely service, enhanced by the rabbi’s familiarity with the bride, whom he has known since her bat mitzvah.

Then we adjourn down that long hallway to a capacious dining room, with a full bar, a wine bar, two buffet tables and a carving station, plus another buffet on an outdoor terrace, which is where the Peking duck resides. Ravenous by now, we take our fill of the buffets, with a return visit to the one with the best-ever sashimi.

Too late do we realize that we should have paced ourselves. This is just the reception.

Doors soon open at the far end of the dining room to reveal an even larger dining room, each table graced with a towering bouquet of white roses. My first thought: Can we steal our centerpiece at the end of the evening? My second thought: To do that, we’d have to fold down the back seats of the BMW and put Monica’s mother on the roof.

It’s a high-energy dinner, thanks to a relentlessly upbeat 9- or 10-piece band that included at least two of the three musicians who played in a much quieter manner for the ceremony. All the recent danceable hits – “Uptown Funk,” “Get Lucky” and “Blurred Lines,” to name a few, plus a little Motown and a touch of Michael Jackson – guarantee that most of the 200+ guests are up shaking their booties when they aren’t eating. Even Monica’s mom abandons her cane and has a moment or two on the floor.

At midnight, the band is still going strong and so are all the revelers who are under 30. Meanwhile, my feet are in rebellion against my shiny black rental shoes and our little threesome is spent. By the time the after-party starts roaring in Old Westbury, we’re home in bed.  

The bride take a first dance with her father