What was Erin thinking, marrying so young and outside her culture? Lofty thoughts apparently, as this young lady is pursuing her doctorate in social psychology, a field in which she also has a masters. Maybe Anthony, with his expertise is electrical engineering, rigged up an elaborate display of lights to ask her out and propose? Who knows? I’m just going with it. They are obviously happy with each other and feel that getting married is one of their smartest moves. We at the Latte Cafe tend to agree.

Cheers to them both!

This just in: Samantha and Colin got married on Saturday in a beautiful garden in the Bronx. You should have been there. It was so romantic, the joining of two media-savvy New Yorkers. I wasn’t there either, but can’t you imagine the hardy pansies, mums pruned trees and other flora decorating their ceremony? If they wish it, perhaps there will be follow-up news on this breaking development. The kind with ten fingers and ten toes that makes pitter-patter on their hardwood floors. Have a happy life, folks!

I have loads of wedding news to tell you about, good readers. Let’s start with the couples that are on our wavelength, from listings in The New York Times:

Uchenna Hicks & Steven McFarland

These two are in the communications business. Hicks is a media and community relations manager for the New York Times and he is a systems analyst handling internal communications for a financial services firm in New York. Hmmm. Ordinarily, the cynic in my would raise eyebrows at two people uniting troubled industries—financial services and newspapers—into one marriage. But they are both good communicators, presumably, so they might already have one huge relationship building block in place. Good luck on your new lives together!

Gyna Villard & Micah Uhrlass.

I had a difficult time grabbing a photo of them for the listing last week, but I’ve succeeded this time. It seems like they had a preacher from the Christian Brethren Assemblies officiate at their church wedding. I was nowhere near Gyna and Micah’s wedding, but if they are a pious as they are happy looking, one can safely guess that their wedding included a reading of this popular nuptials passage from Proverbs 31:10 “Who can find a virtuous wife? For her price is far above rubies?” Have a rich and highly favored life, kids!

Also, I want to start a new practice of posting wedding announcements on the home page, and re-posting them on the “Here Come the Brides” page, which you can access from the links in the left column.

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And speaking of nuptials, we have neighbors of Indian descent who are on the fourth day of a colorful, exuberant wedding extravaganza. When you are in an interracial marriage, the chances are good that your husband is socially progressive and would enjoy living in an ethnically and socially diverse neighborhood. That is the case with us. Our neighbors managed to pull off an elaborate setup on their sliver of a backyard. They squeezed seven tents, scores of chairs and a DJ table into their L-shaped backyard, which is no bigger than a roomy dog run. They festooned the fences and other structures with red and white decorations. The festivities began on Thursday evening. They staged two processions with drummers and other percussionists, which added to my headache that had started in the office that day. As the evening ground toward 11 o’clock, I tried to write a boring story about mutual funds, but the drumming aggravated the pain in my head, so I went outside to ask them to keep it down. They were wrapping up anyway, and apologized for the ruckus. As I walked back home, I glanced up at the light on in our home office, the only one burning in our house, and one of the few lit on our block. I wondered: Hubby and I might be educated professionals and be on higher ground than those neighbors are financially, but who is enjoying a better quality of life right now?

Since Thursday evening, their band has been jamming to the sounds of traditional Indian music (Hubby thought one song sounded Muslim), soca and reggae. It amazed me that the guests—there had to have been at least 80 of them—felt comfortable milling around in that cramped space on a hot summer weekend. But they didn’t care. They partied the whole time. Baby got into the wedding spirit too. On Thursday evening, she twirled and squealed as the Thursday evening procession passed her nursery window. At lunchtime today during one lively song, Baby developed a cute little dance where she held her arms up to her side, chubby fists at shoulder level, and swiveled from side to side. Hubby suggested that we bring Baby over there and crash the party, and that once we held her out to them, they would be smitten by the cute little thing and forgive our imprudence.

As we downed glasses of cold homemade smoothies to polish off lunch, we saw the bride and groom—at last. Little Sister had resorted to spying on them with binoculars to get a glimpse of the happy couple. The bride was resplendent in her white halter-top gown and he looked earnest and handsome in his traditional tux. As I blog, our Indian-Caribbean neighbors seemed to be setting up for the final wedding dinner. My headache from the other day is long gone, but if they give me another one with their raucous joie de vivre, I won’t complain. When cultures come together and a wedding is involved, it’s time to pop the champagne and put the DJ to work!