Many of us who have lived in NYC for years are always looking for new experiences, streets we may have never walked down, etc. The Lotus Club, a private former Vanderbilt mansion, was one such experience for me. A couple contacted me and said that the venue was where they wanted to hold the wedding. It began as a writer’s club in the late 1800s, with members such as Mark Twain. Later, Vanderbilt purchased the museum for her daughter as a wedding gift.
The couple met with me several times and planned a magical wedding. The groom was raised Jewish, and the bride was Catholic. I was co-officiating with a Franciscan priest dressed up in a Friar Tuck-looking brown robe with a hood. It is amazing how rituals can have commonalities across religions when you look into them. The prayer that Aaron the high priest used to bless the Jewish people, “May god bless and keep you…” was adopted by the Catholic Church and often said at the end of Mass.
We entered a grand hallway in this mansion and looked up to see a magnificent Tiffany window. The room where we signed the Ketubah and civil license was a wood-paneled library with massive chairs and a mahogany table. The ceremonial room was elegant, and one could think that many magical dinner parties were held there. Attending the reception took me back in time to the grandeur of the 1890s and the elegance of the Vanderbilts.