When I got married nearly 13 years ago, nothing mattered to me more than finding the perfect dress. Never mind the venue, the flowers, the food—I was singularly focused on leaving no bridal boutique unturned to uncover a gown that represented who I was at that time. Skipping a headpiece entirely, I ultimately settled on a soft white, curve-hugging strapless sheath, with draping on the bodice and an explosion of ruffles down the short train. Paired with turquoise Zuni needlepoint chandelier earrings, I felt both totally myself and very much a traditional bride. If I were getting married in 2019, however, I’d beat a blazing path in the direction of Vera Wang.
The designer, who’s reigned over bridal couture for the past two-plus decades, continues to recreate the very medium she turned on its ear when she hung out a shingle in 1990. Unimpressed with the dresses on offer when she was set to marry her ex-husband, Arthur Becker, she designed her own elaborate gown and commissioned a dressmaker to create it. Since then, countless celebrities from Alicia Keys to Chelsea Clinton to brides-to-be around the globe have flocked to her doors for a chance to experience the singular femininity and glamour only Wang can conjure.
For the 2019 me, Wang’s Tatiana gown is the indisputable standout of the season. From the nude tone to the deep neckline, slit skirt and long, split sleeves, all the way up to the armor detail at the shoulder, this garment feels not only fresh and unique, but entirely relevant to our times. This is a dress for a modern-day warrior. For a generation fed up with silence, abuse and inequality. This one’s not for the blushing bride, but an individual who has vision and a clear sense of self—not to mention excellent taste. I wasn’t quite there 13 years ago, but then again, neither was the world around me.
Weddings are controlled chaos—and planning them is not a one-person job. Soon after asking my then-girlfriend, Laura, to marry me, I remember us springing into fevered action, brainstorming a daunting list of responsibilities for our impending nuptials, all the while working two full-time jobs in “the city that never sleeps.” It helped that Laura’s an organizational wizard—and I follow orders really well.
It goes without saying that we had a lot to accomplish before July 16, 2011. We tracked everything on a Google spreadsheet, which, looking back at it, seemed like a tall task. There were individual tabs for “Guests,” “Budget,” “To-dos,” “Schedule,” “Priests” (yep) and “Music.” Laura and I divided and conquered on some duties, but most of it was done via a unified front. We tasted wedding cakes and appetizers together (we decided on food stations rather than a formal sit-down dinner); visited multiple venues and eventually landed on an event space dating back to the 19th century in Barneveld, NY; and chose both a classical trio to get us down the aisle and a cover band for the reception. (I even pulled off a cover song on my acoustic guitar before the band got going.) We needed to find and hire a wedding photographer and party bus operator to shuttle our guests from their hotels to the venue, and design and print save-the-dates and invitations. As for the wedding itself, Laura and I wanted the ceremony to be equal parts Catholic and Jewish, so we divvied up readings and readers, acquired a unity candle and a special glass for me to crush underfoot at the end of the ceremony, found a willing officiant and booked a nondenominational church. It was a long road between that first day of organizing and “You may kiss the bride,” but it all worked out.
Mark and Jillian Oswalt getting the royal treatment from Mark’s US Navy buddies. (Love Is Wild Photography)
Why am I sharing this with you? It’s not lost on me that in this day and age, the stereotypical, pie-in-the-sky wedding is all bride, all the time. Grooms sort of take a backseat, because, as is assumed, it’s “her day.” And pop culture has only driven that home with reality TV shows such as Say Yes To The Dress, Bridezillas and The Bachelorette—don’t fool yourself; The Bachelor isn’t really about the groom. And, of course, bride magazines abound (not so much for grooms).
I’d like to argue that weddings and the planning involved in them are, more often than not, a 50-50 affair. And I have proof. “We were collaborative with everything,” says native Saratogian Mark Oswalt, a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy (and childhood friend of mine), who tied the knot with his wife, Jillian, down in Pensacola, FL, where he was stationed at the time. “That’s how our relationship has always been: All the decisions are made together,” Oswalt says. With minimal help from their families—mostly because of distance and timing issues—the Oswalts brought their unforgettable day to fruition together. (I was there, and it was a one-of-a-kind day.)
Gabriel Boyers, another native Saratogian and childhood friend, concurs. Boyers married his husband at the pre-renovation Adelphi Hotel in Saratoga and says that the wedding-planning process was pretty equal. “I do sense that—as was the case with ours—there’s a significant shared involvement in most gay weddings,” he tells me. “My husband, Drew, and I planned most of it entirely together, and really enjoyed the process.”
And what about the next generation? A groom who’s experiencing the madness of the pre-wedding rush, Matty Shu of Vinny’s Barber Shop of Saratoga, puts it this way: “My fiancée told me her dream wedding was at The Inn at Erlowest in Lake George, so that’s where we went to look and will be getting married,” he says. “I don’t eat cake but love cannoli, and my fiancée asked them to accommodate us with a cannoli cake for the wedding, which they’re doing.” In other words, their wedding planning process—and ours and Mark’s and Gabe’s—was all about compromise. A word of advice to all of you grooms-to-be: The ability to compromise comes in handy later. Trust me.
I must admit, even as a resident of Saratoga Springs, I didn’t know a whole lot about it until I was assigned a story about it. Scratch that—I knew approximately nothing about Mechanicville. To me, it was a geographic location: situated in southern Saratoga County, east of the Northway and the suburban sprawl of Clifton Park, and one of a string of towns—including Schuylerville and Stillwater—along Route 4, heading north from Troy and hugging the banks of the Hudson River (and that was all thanks to Google Maps).
By the time I actually paid a proper visit to Mechanicville, I’d uncovered a few more morsels about the town—the first being that it’s actually not a town, but technically a city, if a small one. In fact, it’s one of just two cities, along with Saratoga, in the county, and boasts a population of approximately 5000, packed into less than one square mile. (It claims to be the smallest city, area-wise, in the entire state.) I’d also discovered that Mechanicville—while considerably less bustling now than a few generations ago, when manufacturing fueled the local economy—was once home to an important railroad hub, as well as several consequential factories, including the Westvaco Paper Mill, which at one time was one of the largest paper producers in the country.
Mechanicville’s contributions and attributes have always been outsized. If you take the time to learn more about the city, you’ll discover that it has a rich and important history; and it’s a place of deep roots, civic-mindedness and boundless pride among its residents, which include numerous long-established families, many of whom are Italian. That would explain the Italian Fraternal Hall, which stands across a parking lot from the bocce courts, and the names of the many mom-and-pop stores of yesteryear (Alonzo’s, Perrotta’s, DeVito’s), which would eventually give way to chains such as CVS, Cumberland Farms and Family Dollar. (Although other locally owned businesses, such as Costanzo’s Lounge & Restaurant, remain institutions there.)
Mechanicville also happens to be the provenance of a tightly knit, extraordinarily accomplished fraternity of gentlemen whose names have become synonymous with Saratoga, the Capital Region and beyond. Let’s call them “The Boys of Mechanicville.” A good place to begin the story of this band of brothers, who would go on from their Mechanicville roots to become A-list businessmen, entrepreneurs and philanthropists, is with Tony Ianniello, an attorney whose firm, Ianniello Anderson P.C., has offices across Saratoga County and beyond. (Ianniello is the Chair of saratoga living.)
Like so many former residents of Mechanicville, Ianniello’s is an immigrant’s story, his forebears having arrived from Italy in the early part of the 20th century, back when Mechanicville was a boomtown and a destination for folks with a dream, seeking a new life for themselves and their families, and willing to work long, hard hours to make their American Dream a reality. Ianniello’s father ran a barbershop and his mother worked as a seamstress. “None of our folks came over on the Mayflower, and none of us belonged to the country club,” the dapper Ianniello tells me one December afternoon, in his suite of offices in Clifton Park. How ironic, I tell him, since he could probably own his own country club these days. He seems almost embarrassed by the suggestion. “We’re not unique,” he insists. “There have been many, many very successful people who came from Mechanicville.”
Dan Pickett, now Chairman, CEO and Cofounder of tech firm nfrastructure, celebrating after a winning hit on the 1980 Mechanicville All-Star team.
In one sense, Ianniello is dead on; though incredibly successful in his own right, he’s not the only Mechanicville native of note. Enter his quartet of locally famous friends, each of whom grew up in the small city and has put together an enviable résumé. These include Chad Brown, the award-winning and record-breaking Thoroughbred horse trainer; C.J. DeCrescente, President of Mechanicville-based DeCrescente Distributing; Dan Pickett, Chairman, CEO and Cofounder of local technology giant nfrastructure; and Dave DeVoe, former CFO of the global media colossus News Corp. Aside from their professional achievements, the friends, all of whom have maintained close ties to Saratoga and the Capital Region, are extremely active in any number of local institutions and philanthropies. It’s at fundraisers and the like, in fact, that Ianniello says he most often gets to see his friends from the old neighborhood. Then, of course, there’s also summers at Saratoga Race Course (see below).
Over a series of conversations in the weeks leading up to Christmas 2018, these captains of industry would weave for me a remarkable, nostalgic tale of accomplished individuals and families who share a history grounded in idyllic, small-town life, formed in a place and time that hardly seems to exist anymore except in one of Sherwood Anderson’s stories or the reruns of some ’50s TV show. Travel to Mechanicville, and you’ll find so many of the hallmarks of Anywhere USA. Imposing church steeple? Check. Bucolic streets lined with white picket fences? Check. A corner bar serving $2 drafts, where every television set is tuned to the New York Giants? Check. A diner where a fresh pot of coffee is always on, everybody seems to know everybody and a chatty waitress dishes more than just the daily lunch special? Check, please—but not until I’ve heard one more irresistible piece of gossip. (In Mechanicville, that place is Bubbles Restaurant, which also serves the best hard ice cream around.)
So what is it, exactly, that makes Mechanicville so incredibly special?
Chad Brown—who, at 40, is what you might call the “kid” of the group—describes his hometown this way: “It was the type of place where everyone looked after each other—football games on Friday night, great teachers who taught us values, an old-school Italian community that always stuck together, like one big family. I was lucky to grow up there.” Brown, a superstar in the world of horse racing, who now lives in Saratoga, first discovered his love for the sport during childhood trips to Saratoga Raceway, the local harness track. In high school, he got a job there, working under trainer Paul Kelley. Even after heading off to Cornell University, Brown would return to Saratoga during the summers to work at Saratoga Race Course under trainer Claude R. “Shug” McGaughey III. Fast-forward to today, and Brown has swapped harness for Thoroughbred racing, and now boasts upwards of 1200 career wins, including his first Triple Crown race in the 2017 Preakness Stakes with Cloud Computing. He won the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s (NTRA’s) Eclipse Award for Outstanding Trainer in 2016, 2017 and 2018—years in which he was ranked No. 1 in North America in terms of total earnings. (He finished out 2018 with a reported $27.3 million, making for career earnings totaling $148.3 million.)
Bubbles restaurant is a popular hub in Mechanicville. (Kyle Adams)
Brown says it’s not surprising that so many successful people have come out of Mechanicville, crediting not just his own mom and dad and his mentors all those years ago, but also the rock-solid community as a whole—which includes the teachers and coaches he had going back to first grade—with providing the foundation that would lead to his phenomenal run. “They taught you that you work hard, you don’t cut corners, you keep your word—if you say you’re going to do something, then you do it,” he tells me. “Looking at America today, that’s lacking. It traces back to what our core values are. Nobody’s perfect—but you learn as you go in life. Those were the common values of our community, from household to household.”
Dan Pickett concurs: “Mechanicville is a town on the Hudson River where you had a lot of immigrant families, and I think there’s always been a strong work ethic because of that. I think people valued family, working hard, loyalty. It’s a small city, so people were close. The school, back when we grew up, was a good school, with good teachers and mentors, and I think that helped get things rolling for us guys.”
Pickett has been on a roll from the beginning, actually. After graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, he went on to become a major player in the tech and private equity worlds, and one of the Capital Region’s foremost philanthropists. The Pickett Family Foundation, founded in 2001, supports numerous charities, including the American Cancer Society, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, St. Peter’s Health Partners and Saratoga Hospital. Pickett has served on the boards of a number of institutions and nonprofits, including Albany Medical Center and the local chapter of Gilda’s Club, named for the late Saturday Night Live star Gilda Radner. He’s also on the board of trustees for his alma mater, RPI.
Pickett says that he’s not only known and stayed in touch with this group of four friends and their families his entire life, but he’s also been able to seek them out for professional advice and guidance throughout the years. “When I’ve needed help with something, all those guys have been there and have helped me in some way, shape or form over the years,” says Pickett. For example, friend Dave DeVoe—whom, he points out, rose to the upper ranks of the media world as one of Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand men—offered invaluable counsel when Pickett was putting together a merger between nfrastructure and tech company Zones, a deal that created a $1.5 billion global company with operations from New York to New Delhi. (Pickett’s company, which he founded with his father and brother in the basement of the family’s liquor store in Mechanicville, is now a Zones subsidiary.) “Here he was, the CFO of one of the biggest media companies in the world, but he’s also generous with other people, a mentor. He didn’t run away from his roots—he feels a responsibility to help people achieve the same success he did.” To that same point, C.J. DeCrescente’s family, in 1990, financed nfrastructure’s first office building, according to Pickett. Likewise, he says, Tony Ianniello has offered sage legal advice. “When you look back, there are all these little moments in time, and each one was just sort of a stone on a scale that ended up tipping in a certain direction, where you ended up creating something that’s so big and so special that you can’t even believe it happened,” says Pickett. “It’s all the result of a lot of hard work over a sustained period of time, with a lot of hard-working people.” And of his friends? “I’m proud of those guys. I’m proud of what they’ve accomplished, and probably more so of how hard they worked to get there.”
C.J. DeCrescente, who went on to become President of the Mechanicville-based DeCrescente Distributing.
Getting there was certainly not a walk in the park. C.J. DeCrescente points out that he and his four friends all came from relatively humble beginnings: “My family lived in a two-bedroom apartment, where we shared one bathroom. We lived there until my father bought his first house in the ’80s. We were working pretty hard for what we had back then—but we always knew we were being supported locally. We started to become an important little part of Mechanicville as far as employment.” (DeCrescente Distributing’s 70th anniversary was the subject of a story in the 2018 Holiday issue of saratoga living.) Times weren’t always so prosperous, though. There were days when DeCrescente’s mother would have him hold checks, because there weren’t enough funds to cover them. “You don’t forget that kind of stuff,” he says. “I try to instill the same in my kids—you want them to have an understanding of how things used to be.” Oh, how things have changed for the company, and for DeCrescente himself, who’s on the boards of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), the Alzheimer’s Association’s regional chapter and the David Ortiz Children’s Fund, among others. He’s also Chairman of the New York State Police Signal 30 Benefit Fund, which helps support the families of officers killed or injured in the line of duty. “If you’d asked me 40 years ago if we’d ever be able to do some of the things we’ve been able to do philanthropically, I would’ve said, ‘Jeez, I don’t know—we can barely make payroll,’ you know? It’s a trip.”
Even when it comes to the many charities he supports, DeCrescente is mindful that hard work is the key to success. He urges his senior leadership to give not just money but time to worthy causes. “Checks are great, but there’s no better way of giving back than by actually getting involved in the organization,” he says. When I spoke to DeCrescente, he was headed off to meet up with family members and employees for their annual Christmastime tour of area facilities for the sick and elderly, including Saratoga Bridges in Wilton. They dress up in costumes (C.J. was The Grinch), sing carols and spend quality time visiting with those who could use a little holiday cheer, culminating in a big gathering at C.J.’s house in Clifton Park.
But it can’t just be hard work, right? I ask Tony Ianniello if, maybe, there’s something in Mechanicville’s water. He pauses for a minute and says: “I’d say strong families—we all came from strong family backgrounds.” He then reels off the biographies of his friends like a man talking about his own brothers. “C.J. is the third-generation of a distribution company, and he’s taken it very far, as his father did from his grandfather. Dan Pickett’s parents were both from Mechanicville—his father was a star athlete who played all sports. A lot of us played sports.” (Basketball and baseball were Ianniello’s games, from Little League through high school.) He continues: “Dan went to RPI and is the youngest member of the Board of Directors in the history of RPI. I went to Union College, Dave went to SUNY Plattsburgh, Chad went to Cornell—so we were all educated Upstate.” Because of those ties, Ianniello never strayed too far from his friends. After earning his BA from Union, he went on to get an MS/MBA from Northeastern University before returning to the area to complete his JD from Albany Law School. He’s been in private practice since 1970, with a concentration in real estate law. (While he’s built a reputation as one of the area’s most prominent attorneys, Ianniello reveals that he didn’t always want to go into law—he originally wanted to be an investment banker.) Today, Ianniello Anderson employs 16 lawyers and a support staff of 50, has 5 offices in New York and Florida, and is licensed in several states.
Aside from his day job, Ianniello is, like his successful friends, heavily involved in the arts and local philanthropies, serving on the boards of SPAC, Universal Preservation Hall and the Saratoga Automobile Museum (of which he is a former Chairman), and he’s closely involved with organizations such as Opera Saratoga, the National Museum of Dance and Saratoga Arts. “My greatest passion is supporting the arts for young people,” says Ianniello. “We have a lot of plans to make Saratoga really a national destination for the arts.” This May, Ianniello will be honored for his contributions to the fight against cancer with the Beacon of Hope Award at the American Cancer Society’s annual Gala of Hope at the Hall of Springs.
As is fitting for someone so closely associated with the Auto Museum, Ianniello has loved cars as far back as he can remember, and as an adult has gone on to become somewhat of a collector—though he’s quick to correct me that a true collector is one who deals in vintage models, while most of his are on the newer side. When I ask him to share with me all the wheels he owns, he obliges (in case you’re interested, he’s got two Ferraris, three Porsches, a McLaren and a Bentley). Today, Ianniello makes his home overlooking Lake Lonely, just east of Downtown Saratoga and 14 miles due north, give or take, of Mechanicville.
It was never really a question that, even as he achieved such an impressive education and started building his career, Ianniello would stay close to home. He wanted to be near his parents as they advanced in years (they’re now deceased, as are both his brothers), as well as his five nephews, with whom he remains close. Echoing his friend C.J. DeCrescente, Ianniello points out that it wasn’t always easy creating a business from the ground up in this part of the world. “The business climate when I started was, I’d say, in the doldrums. It wasn’t a very robust environment, and over a long period of time, we’ve arrived at where we are now, which is like an oasis in the middle of the desert. Most of Upstate New York is challenging, but the Capital Region has, I think, a robust business environment.” Much of that he credits to Glens Falls native Joe Bruno, the longtime Republican leader of the New York State Senate, as well as local investment by companies such as GLOBALFOUNDRIES and the establishment of the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering on the campus of SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany.
Mechanicville was once a bustling train town, with commuter trains moving people across the state and the rail yards providing hundreds of jobs to city residents. Now, the trains are best known for making locals late to appointments. (Kyle Adams)
So what of Mechanicville and its future? Its proximity to the state capital, access to big-time employers and enviable location on the Hudson continue to benefit the city greatly. Neighborhood institutions such as the Arts Center on the Hudson, located in the stunningly renovated Gothic building that used to house St. Luke’s Church, have breathed new life into the community. Well-established Mechanicville traditions, some of them more than a century old, are still alive, such as the annual Feast of the Assumption Parade every August. And yet, there continues to be so much obvious opportunity here. You see it as you walk these streets, in the old buildings that could use a little TLC and vacant storefronts—a familiar site, sadly, in so many small cities that have fallen victim to the Walmarts and Amazons of the world.
I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping for a Mechanicville renaissance. Might the city become the next Troy or Hudson—ripe for a new wave of émigrés, the next generation of visionaries in the form of restaurateurs, shopkeepers, artisans and artists? Like all the other boys from Mechanicville, Pickett still roots for his hometown: “Given the opportunity, and with the right local leadership and the right master plan for the town, there’s definitely potential there. Like anything, it’ll take a few very committed people to engage other committed people to increasingly do things to make the city special, so that when you look back five or ten years from now you’ll be amazed at what they got done.”
So, yes, I think a renaissance is in order, and if history is any guide, these boys of Mechanicville will be rooting for their hometown. No question about it.
Training Day: The Boys of Mechanicville Take The Racetrack By Storm
(from left) Chad Brown, Dave DeVoe, C.J. DeCrescente, Tony Ianniello and Dan Pickett at Saratoga Race Course. (Dori Fitzpatrick)
On August 31, 2018, the day before Chad Brown became the winningest horse trainer in Saratoga Race Course history, he was enjoying a different kind of day at the races. The guest list included powerhouse friends and Mechanicville natives Tony Ianniello, Partner at Ianniello Anderson, P.C. (and Chair of saratoga living); C.J. DeCrescente, President of DeCrescente Distributing Company; Dan Pickett, CEO and Cofounder of tech firm nfrastructure; and Dave DeVoe, the former CFO of News Corp, all of whom met Brown at 7am sharp for a tour of his Thoroughbred stables in a part of the racetrack few fans ever get to see. And I was there, a fly on the wall, along with saratoga living Senior Photographer Dori Fitzpatrick, to capture this rare meeting of minds.
The group met at Barn 52, adjacent to the Oklahoma Training Track, across Union Avenue from the main track. The barn is the center of Brown’s operations and where the private tour began. Chad led us on a muddy walk around the grounds, and we caught groomers prepping and washing his horses, including the four who would run under his name later that day. We also met a two-year-old filly named Feedback, who’d won her first race by eight lengths at Saratoga earlier in the month.
Next, we were shuttled over to the main track by golf cart, joining the other trainers and owners watching their horses jog, gallop and breeze by. With the haze of the morning lifting, we stood at the rail, admiring the view of the Grandstand as Brown coordinated which horses, in pairs, he wanted to see work, to assess his options for future races.
After a full morning of touring, which included a peek inside Brown’s offices (its walls lined with photos from all of his winning races), we ended up at the Grandstand, where Brown graciously offered his box seats to us for the day. The very next day, from those same seats, Brown would watch his two-year-old colt Spirit Animal cross the finish line first in the sixth race, setting the new single-season record for wins with 41 at Saratoga (he’d finish the card with two more wins). It was quite a day. —Joe Mastrianni
Before I wrote for saratoga living, I made my living as a professional guitarist. I taught lessons, performed at parties and worked my fair share of weddings. I’ve played them all: indoor and outdoor weddings, at a little wedding chapel, a big lakeside resort and even (once) in a botanical garden. Fortunately, I’ve never performed at a wedding disrupted to the point where I needed to use my guitar as an umbrella. Emily Eldridge Korn, who got married just outside of Saratoga Springs in 2014, didn’t have the same kind of luck.
Raised in Kentucky but having spent her summers in Ballston Spa with her grandmother, Emily was a regular in our neck of the woods. “We’d go up to the racetrack in Saratoga and loved it,” she says. She met her future husband, Steven, while attending college in New York City, and the couple dated for seven years before getting engaged. Soon after, Emily began brainstorming the ideal location for a country wedding. “I just wanted a traditional, Upstate New York, fall wedding,” says Emily, who decided on mid-September for the event.
Emily Eldridge Korn making her way to her wedding ceremony amidst a torrential downpour. (Heather Bohm-Tallman)
She eventually landed on that perfect spot in Northumberland, NY, one that had a family connection, making it even more special. Her father’s cousin, George Story, owns a small island on the Hudson River near Schuylerville called Thompson Island, where he raises harness racing horses. (Story’s horses compete regularly at Saratoga’s harness track.) Talk about a romantic setting: “Half of the island is wooded, and there are waterfalls, as well as a cabin, two barns with horses and beautiful gardens,” says Emily. The ceremony was to be held entirely outdoors, with guests ferried over to the island on a barge and then transported uphill to the ceremony by horse-drawn carriage. Emily had every aspect of the day meticulously planned out—that is, except for the weather forecast. “It’s Upstate New York, so you can’t predict the weather,” she says, laughing. “The day we did the rehearsal, it couldn’t have been a more beautiful day.”
Come her wedding day, the tides had turned considerably. “It was just a torrential downpour,” says Emily. Imagine shipping guests in their finest across the Hudson, then uphill in a carriage, with the heavens raining down. And, well, also doing that with the bride-to-be in an all-white dress. Yikes. But Emily’s wedding party pulled off a minor miracle, with her Maid of Honor holding an umbrella over her the entire time, and her bridesmaids hovering around her, keeping her dress from touching the ground. “Getting down the slope onto the barge and getting off again was definitely the most difficult part,” says Emily. “I’m sure that all eight of my bridesmaids were pitching in at that point.”
Incredibly, though, despite the inclement weather and transportation obstacles—not to mention a horse breaking loose from its stall and running around covered in mud—Emily walked down the aisle in a spotless white dress. Sure, the weather made it chillier than expected, and the ceremony had to be moved at the last minute into the reception tent, but Emily says somehow that made it even more of an intimate affair. “The tent company pumped in hot air for us, so, really, it was nice and cozy,” she says. And the rain wasn’t so bad after all. “I think the disaster of it being so rainy made it more romantic, because it kept everyone in the tent together, dancing and drinking and eating.”
Now, if I ever find myself performing at a wedding and it starts pouring, I’ll remember Emily’s aplomb—and hope that there’s a cozy tent nearby.
My wife and I were married by a Catholic priest in a Unitarian church—but not before a stressful couple of months trying to track down an officiant who’d agree to marry us. Who knew that, in 2011, it would still be so difficult to find someone willing to marry two people of different faiths? Saratogian Jason Brown and his then-fiancée, Janelle, had it a lot easier than we did. That’s because one of Brown’s best friends, Michael Oswalt, happened to be a licensed officiant and happily accepted the gig of marrying his friends. “Mike had known me for a lifetime, and he’d known Janelle, at that point, for six years,” says Brown. “Having someone who knew both of us for that long was a huge advantage. He really listened to what we wanted and followed that closely.”
The Browns’ 2014 wedding wasn’t Oswalt’s first crack at officiating a wedding. He’d previously overseen the “I do’s” of two of his other best friends, both of whom were native Saratogians: Jake Rosenfeld in 2009 and Todd Bucci in 2011. (Full disclosure: I’m childhood friends with Oswalt and all three grooms.) “I’ve got a degree in theology from Duke University, but I wasn’t actually ordained, so I didn’t have the power to run a wedding ceremony,” says Oswalt of his life before officiating that first wedding. He did assume at some point that a friend might ask him to officiate his or her wedding, given his background, but he wasn’t actively pursuing the role. And then Rosenfeld came calling.
From the beginning, Rosenfeld tells me, he’d known he wanted his friend to marry him and his future wife, Erin McGaughey. “It was a challenge to think of a way to entice him to agree to the role,” says Rosenfeld. But he didn’t have to argue his case for too long—and Oswalt had all the makings of a legit officiant. “Mike has a side of his life that’s very spiritual, and at the time, he was really active in his church, so he fit a role that, frankly, a lot of our friends and family members did not,” says Rosenfeld. “The harder-to-put-into-words part of it was that he struck us as a performer and someone who would really entertain and engage the crowd, and do so in a really meaningful way.”
Oswalt’s first wedding as an officiant, marrying friends Jake Rosenfeld and Erin McGaughey. (Kati Greaney Photography)
So what, exactly, did Oswalt have to do to become an ordained officiant? “There’s an online outfit called the Universal Life Church, and they’ve got an online ordination course that I used and became certified through,” says Oswalt. “Almost every state allows someone with that type of online certification to lead a wedding.” The entire process took about five minutes to complete.
By no means did Oswalt spend mere minutes preparing to marry his friends, though. In fact, it was just the opposite; he pored over information about the couples and had them answer interview questions, so he could better structure the ceremony and include personal touches in it. (He admits that he was “terrified” doing that first wedding—and had an “aha!” moment during the walk-through, when he realized he was in charge of the better part of the ceremony.) “I thought a lot about the function of weddings,” says Oswalt. “They’re a cool hybrid; two people are making a very public commitment to each other to become a public union going forward. That’s why we do them in front of family and friends. But ultimately, they’re an incredibly private choice; a lot of personal, one-on-one decision-making goes into the choice to get married, and I essentially saw my role as the officiant being a bridge between those two worlds.”
Oswalt ended up organizing a completely different ceremony for each of his friends based on their wishes. For example, the Buccis requested a bit more of a “religious tone” for their ceremony than the Rosenfeld-McGaugheys, and Oswalt obliged, helping the couple brainstorm ideas that would add a more traditional flavor to it. One concept that made the final cut? A “sand ceremony,” where the mothers of the bride and groom each poured a vase of colored sand together into a single vase. Oswalt even customized the length of each service, the amount of friend/family involvement and the type of language used during the vows for each couple.
Now that I’m thinking back on my own wedding, it would’ve been a lot more convenient (and maybe a little less stressful) to have a family friend marry us—maybe even Mike. But in reality, I wouldn’t have changed a thing about our big day. It came together just as we planned it.
These days, weddings are as much about the photos as they are the ceremony. OK, OK. Maybe that’s not entirely true, but I know for sure that on my wedding day, my dark blue-clad bridesmaids and I will be taking photos at my family friends’ blueberry farm before anyone says “I do.” Saratogians Jeremiah and Timothy Tyrrell know what I’m talking about; their Saratoga-tastic wedding whisked them from their aunt and uncle’s condo at the High Rock, to Saratoga National Golf Club, to the dance floors of Caroline Street, but not without a stop for a good, old-fashioned photoshoot on Broadway.
On that day last June, Mother Nature was on their side, blessing them with clear skies and 70-degree temperatures, as their 20-person wedding party strolled Downtown. They stopped at The Washington (saratoga living’s HQ) and got some shots from the scenic rooftop (why haven’t I been up there yet?), then promenaded across Broadway, just as The Beatles did across Abbey Road on the cover of their iconic 1969 album. “We walked down the aisle to a harpist playing “Here Comes The Sun,” Jeremiah says. “We both grew up listening to The Beatles with our parents and thought the Abbey Road photo would be a fun and subtle way to connect parts of our day.”
Though they reside here now, Timothy and Jeremiah got married in Saratoga while they were living abroad in Zurich. “We always found ourselves visiting Saratoga, whether it was for dinner or even a weekend vacation,” Jeremiah says. “And now we live Downtown with many reminders of our wedding day that are always bringing us back to the best day of our lives,” Jeremiah says. And as if crossing Broadway wasn’t enough of a daily reminder of their big day, Timothy and Jeremiah will always have their gorgeous wedding photos, too.
When I show up to Robert and Geraldine Belisario’s Wilton home, sopping wet after a GPS-induced misadventure to the wrong apartment complex, Geraldine, who goes by Gerry, answers the door. “Are you the girl who called me?” she asks. Why yes, I am, and she invites me into her small, carpeted living room, decorated with a miniature jukebox, tiny Christmas tree on a side table and a collection of Christmas cards. Gerry’s husband, Bob, in his bright red suspenders, sits in a corner chair. When I explain how I’d heard about their too-good-to-be-true love story, Bob chuckles: “She doesn’t love me; she puts up with me!”
If that’s the case, Gerry has put up with him for 72 years—more, if you count the time they were together before getting married. She’ll be 92 in February, and he’ll be 94 in April. But 72 years of marriage isn’t the only way the couple’s love story earned saratoga living’s designation as “The Greatest (Saratoga) Love Story Ever Told.”
“It was 1942, the war was on, and I was in the service,” Bob begins. (He’s telling the story, notes Gerry, because he has a better memory.) Gerry was still in high school in Schenectady, so she wasn’t old enough to be a part of the war effort yet. But she and her girlfriend wanted to pitch in in some way, so they decided to write letters to soldiers. They contacted a woman who knew quite a few from the area, and she gave Gerry Bob’s name, since she couldn’t pronounce it. (Belisario, that is—not Bob.) At the time of Gerry’s first letter, Bob, an Albany native, was in transit from a US Navy hospital in California to one in Panama, where he ended up receiving the missive. He responded, and the two quickly began a regular correspondence. They mostly wrote about what was going on in each other’s lives—Gerry, about what was happening on the home front—and what the future had in store for them. It turned out that they were both avid roller skaters (“at different rinks, of course”), so they connected on a more personal level too.
As time went on, the letters took on a new flavor. “I thought, ‘This guy seems to be very romantic, but holy jeez, he doesn’t even know what I look like!’” Gerry interjects. “And then she sent me a photo of her in a sweater—” Bob starts. “I’m going to hit you over the head!” Gerry says pointedly.
Bob and Gerry Belisario on their 70th wedding anniversary in 2016.
In November 1943, Bob was granted a 30-day leave and returned home to Albany. The two pen pals immediately connected in person and spent almost every day together thereafter. Sometimes they’d go out to eat; other times they’d park by the train tracks and watch the trains go by. It was during that month—if Bob’s memory serves him right—that he gave her a ring. Over the next two-and-a-half years, Bob only made it home one more time, before returning to the US for good in March 1946. On May 25 of that year, he and Gerry were married at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Albany.
Bob remained in the service for two more years following the couple’s wedding, and he and his wife would eventually have five children, eleven grandchildren and, they think, nine great-grandchildren. (“I’ve lost count,” Gerry says.) Gerry’s a Civil War buff, so she and her husband have been to many of the war’s historic sites, including the exact spot in Virginia where Bob’s great-great-grandfather was wounded during the war.
When I ask what the key to staying together for 72 years is, Gerry says she wouldn’t even try to give advice to other couples. “It’s a crapshoot,” she says. But Bob gives the answer a shot: “The secret to marriage is individuals talking to each other,” he says. “You have to talk things out. No marriage is 100 percent happy.” That said, he tells me that he and Gerry don’t really argue anymore. “There’s no sense in arguing,” he says. “I can’t win.”
“Oh, my heart bleeds for you,” Gerry replies, sarcastically.
“She lets me think I’m the boss,” he retorts.
“You are the boss…but only because I let you be,” she says.
Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for a good love story. Twilight? Made me swear off boys who aren’t vampires. Titanic? Honestly, who can resist a 22-year-old Leo? Dear John? Cried through it all. Twice. But talking with Bob and Gerry is different. If a film were to be made about them, it wouldn’t be a mushy-gushy romance based on a book written by Nicholas Sparks. It would be the story of two people who met in a pretty amazing way, were attracted to each other and then figured out how to make the next three quarters of a century work. It’d be part drama, part romantic comedy, part boring documentary, because that’s what marriage is: long stretches of time when, to quote Bob, you’re just putting up with each other, sprinkled with the moments love stories are made of. So to amend my previous statement: Bob and Gerry’s story isn’t the greatest love story ever told. It’s the greatest real love story ever told. And if, 72 years from now, I’m half as happy as the two of them, I’ll count my story as pretty great too.
I’ve been to three weddings in my life: one when I was ten, one that served pudding instead of dinner and one that was my grandfather’s (weird, I know). All were within an hour and a half of my house, and none were in Saratoga Springs. So when the saratoga living team decided to name Saratoga one of the world’s greatest destination wedding locations and needed some amazing wedding stories to support that claim, I had to call for backup. Enter Tonya Pellegrini-Lawrence: Downtown Business Association powerhouse, event-planner extraordinaire and one of the coolest women I’ve met in Saratoga (who, by the way, has one of the greatest stories of how she met her husband I’ve ever heard—ask her about it).
Tonya came into our offices with fantastical tales of weddings gone wrong, weddings gone so, so right and one destination wedding so amazing, it made me want to literally get up and propose to my boyfriend right then and there. (Luckily, I know that he doesn’t actually read any of the stories I write, so he won’t see this little tidbit.) The couple was Bonita Banerjee and her husband to be, Alex, and instead of traveling to Saratoga from Washington, DC to have one unforgettable wedding ceremony, they decided to have two—a Hindu ceremony in the morning at the National Museum of Dance and a traditional, Western-style, white-dress wedding in the afternoon at Saratoga National Golf Club. And to top it all off, Bonita, whose parents live in Scotia, was coming up to the Capital Region just a week after Tonya told me her wedding story and bringing with her 1600 unbelievable wedding photos, shot by the talented Guilderland-based photographer Matt Ramos.
The photos in the above gallery, featuring text written by the bride herself, give a behind-the-scenes look at that unforgettable, totally exhausting, totally worth-it day. Sure, I may not have actually been there in person, but this wedding totally trumps the three I’ve been to. By far.
On page 127 of saratoga living‘s new “I Do!” Issue, there’s a crossword puzzle, entitled “I Thee Wed. Below is the answer key—or for some of you, the world’s greatest cheat sheet.
Skidmore College has been working closely with Salmagundi, a prominent literary magazine published on campus, to present an upcoming, seven-part interactive conference, entitled “Sharing The Wealth: Six Leading Black Intellectuals Talk About Their Work And The Culture.” The conference, which will be held in Skidmore’s Davis Auditorium February 1-3, is free and open to the general public. The talented lineup set to speak at the conference include National Book Award winner Orlando Patterson (Freedom Volume 1: Freedom In the Making of Western Culture); Pulitzer Prize-winning author Margo Jefferson (Negroland: A Memoir); novelist, playwright Darryl Pinckney and Whiting Award winner (Black Deutschland); novelist, essayist Danzy Senna and Whiting Award winner (Caucasia); author and essayist Thomas Chatterton Williams (see: “My Black Privilege“); and author John McWhorter (Winning The Race: Beyond The Crisis in Black America).
The seven conference sessions will consist of six opening remarks (one by each of the six speakers) and an audience participation session on Sunday afternoon. All six speakers will be present at every session during the conference to participate in a discussion following the opening remarks, and audience members are encouraged to pose questions and voice their own opinions at the end of each session.
I’m most looking forward to the discussions with essayists Williams and McWhorter, who penned the aforementioned “My Black Privilege” and “You Can’t ‘Steal’ a Culture: In Defense of Cultural Appropriation,” respectively. Both works stray from readers’ general perception of the black experience in America by reflecting on personal experiences and presenting thought-provoking opinions about the role race plays in everyone’s lives. I’ve been studying these works (and many of the other writers’ works as well) in a class entitled, Multimedia Literary Archive, which is comprised almost entirely of white students and taught by a white professor, with just a few of us students of color. On just the second day of the class, we were challenged to discuss race and identity—and though the discussion was lively, it was ultimately respectful. (I expect a similar energy to define the discourse at the conference.)
The poster for the ‘Sharing The Wealth: Six Leading Black Intellectuals Talk About Their Work And The Culture’ coming to Skidmore College February 1-3.
Collectively, the speakers have written about appropriation, privilege, social status and other facets of identity, though their ideas on these topics vary vastly, and they have been known to disagree with one another. Much like my class, I think it’s those disagreements that will make for a series of engaging conversations throughout the duration of the conference.
