Do Jenny and Jaki Get Married in 2020? (Part 1)

A multi-chapter blog on

How to have a Covid-19 Wedding

Chapter 1: But wait, its a Pandemic! How can we have a wedding?

Jaki and I had planned a big family wedding for March 29, 2020 in Brooklyn at The Greenpoint Loft. We invited our friends and families from near and far (and yes you were invited too). We planned excitedly to celebrate with our nearest and dearest.

When Friday the 13th of March came, two weeks before the wedding, we got the download that if we didn’t get to City Hall by the end of the day that Friday, we would might not be having a wedding at all – since getting marriage certificates was an important part of the marriage plan.

At the end of our work days that Friday, we each raced downtown from work, and arrived at The New York City Marriage Bureau, at 141 Worth Street in downtown Manhattan – almost too late.

We were the last couple to make it into the building to get our certificates.

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This was the first of many miracles that happened during the end of March 2020 – and allowed us to find our way to building our lives together – step by step.

Let’s remember that this was a period of time marked by major losses of life, fear and quarantine for New York City, and the world. A major time of crisis. The first of its kind that I had seen in my life. And a time beset by a strong sense of uncertainty for many of us.

We were fortunate to not fall prey to the terror, though we were not untouched by the massive changes our city, and the world were undertaking to stay safe and healthy – in the midst of a Global Pandemic.

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And as things turned out from Monday the 16th of March, the Marriage Bureau was closed, as it was the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic, as it hit New York City.

Almost overnight the entire city shut down, and we realized by the end of that weekend, that the wedding we had planned to have, would have to be postponed. Even in that moment, we didn’t know how we might proceed.

We clung tightly to a ray of hope, and our love for each other. We asked of ourselves each individually, and also each other – how to find a way to honor our commitment to each other. With so with many challenges, how would we find our way?

Chapter 2: Coping with a change of plans becomes a source of inspiration

It quickly became clear to us, with email and call after call that traveling to New York City in the beginning of a Pandemic that was hitting New York in record time, was not something that a lot of our guests had planned to do, when saying yes to joining our celebration.

Jaki and I are lucky to have truly wonderful friends and family around the world. And though we each felt our own disappointments in not having the wedding we had planned, it had become clear that we would have to change our plan.

We send this letter to our wedding guests that weekend:

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In the days leading up to what might have been the wedding we had planned and saved for, we found ourselves reaching out to our wedding guests (like you) and raising $3,500 for the Community Chest Fund from the community.

Throwing ourselves into a place where we could give rather than feel deprived of our celebration, energized us, and gave us hope about the future.

Chapter 3 : Who will marry us?

From the time that Jaki proposed to me in Paris …

We had thought long and hard about who we wanted to marry us.

We are both Jewish, but have each studied and practiced in different wisdom traditions for many years.

After a long process, we met with Rabbi Korn, the Chabad Rabbi for all the Downtown New York colleges: NYU, Cooper Union, New School, Baruch College, and many more.

Jaki knew Rabbi Korn from his NYU days as an Undergraduate Student at Tisch and Gallatin, and a Graduate student at ITP. He was clear that if he was ever going to get married, he’d want Rabbi Korn to be the guy to do it.

We met with Rabbi Korn on a quick lunch meeting in the winter of 2019 after visiting the Downtown Chabad on Bowery for a boisterous Friday night. The kindness of the students and spiritual clarity of the space really spoke to me.

When we met with Rabbi Korn that winter, very quickly we discovered that he had a strength, a wisdom and a sense of humor that made Jaki and I both feel he was a good choice to guide us into our Jewish spiritual lives together.

Little did we know at the time, how he and his wife Sarah would become spiritual guides for us, as we navigated the uncertain waters of “essential gatherings,” and what it means to be married and build a home together.

Whether or not it was safe for our families and for us to gather at all to have a Jewish Wedding in the age of a Global Pandemic, with New York City as the epicenter was very murky.

Once we decided to postpone our wedding party Jaki and I were just at the beginning of our true marriage negotiations. A deep process of deciding how we were best to proceed.

Stay tuned for the next installment of, Do Jenny and Jaki Get Married in 2020 (Part 2)…