Summer, 2013; Highland Park, CA.

An almost chilly night in early August...

Meet Michael: 5’9”, curly hair, wanton disregard for proper punctuation. He’s standing outside a rambling, one-story house that grips barnacle-like onto the side of one of Highland Park’s many scrubby hills. No doubt he’s smoking a Marlboro Red. No doubt he’s speaking very emphatically about something or other. Let’s say Kant, to be generous.

Some miles away....

Meet Rachel: shorter, riding in the air-conditioned backseat of a friend’s car, coming from some show deep in a south-western suburb of Los Angeles. No doubt she’s smiling politely. No doubt she’s nodding along to whoever is speaking emphatically about something or other.

These are our protagonists...

How they met doesn’t matter. Like every story, it’s filled with inconsistencies, lies, misremembered details, and—of course—a Rashomon bit in the middle where Michael says one thing happened and Rachel another. What matters is that they did meet (in fact, they met many times, but that’s a story for another place). They met and, by some crazy-random-happenstance, decided to give each other a chance. It matters that, in a few weeks, Rachel is going back to Manhattan and Michael is flying to Gambier, Ohio for one of the last times.

Rachel doesn’t want to do long distance. Michael agrees, at first. Rachel gets her wisdom teeth taken out, Michael makes the rash decision that he should be the one to take care of her. Michael may or may not have said he loved her very early in the relationship (it’s another Rashomon thing, no one really knows).

Time passes...

Michael graduates. Rachel graduates. Michael gets jobs. Rachel gets jobs. Grad school. They move to Amherst.

A freezing afternoon this past March...

Michael has a plan. He’s worked it out. The Cloisters, all their friends, a ring they chose together; it’s perfect. Minus the fact that two friends (I’m looking at you, Lana and Pete) are spotted as they get close to their destination. But it doesn’t matter. He has a speech he’s written (duh), he gets on one knee, there is crying and...

That’s where you come in:

Come rain, come snow, come whatever the weather gods of New England choose to bless us with, on November 3^rd, 2019, there will be a wedding. But that’s not all! There will be friends; family members (including—but not limited to—aunts, uncles, cousins, second-cousins, second-cousins-once-removed, quantum-cousins removed and not removed, simultaneously); a band; assorted beverages; a fireplace; a never-before-seen piece of performance art wherein one Jew watches another Jew crack a glass in front of dozens of clapping relations; likely an overlong set of vows with no less than two spelling errors; fine leather goods; silk ties; dresses of assorted colors; complaints about the music; a fortune teller?; lots of love; laughter; generational miscommunication; and, most importantly, our now older-but-no-wiser protagonists, the intrepid duo, Michael and Rachel. In a shaggy, rustic bit of Central Massachusetts, on that perfect (it’s going to be perfect, trust us, we consulted an augur) Autumn afternoon, you are invited to join them in making a memory that will be spoken about for years to come.

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