[title type="h5"]Friday, December 12, 2014.
Wedding Festival, Part 3: Rehearsal, Then Antoine's.
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Just by watching Mary Ann, one could tell that the nuptials for her firstborn son, the love of her life, were moving inexorably (and uxorially) to the summit of logistics and emotions. She is in residence at the Windsor Court Hotel, where she is a member of The Club. For a couple hundred dollars extra, denizens of The Club get to nibble and sip in accordance with the time of day, without limits or charges. Mary Ann loves The Club for both its luxuries and its history in our own marriage. We spent two nights at the hotel before departing on our honeymoon. The room we were given was the entire space which, two decades later, would be renovated into The Club. All of it, grand piano and all, was ours for those two nights.
The day was more or less routine for me until the end of the radio show. Then I walked over to the Windsor Court (it's only two blocks from the radio station) and joined the gathering cast of wedding characters. They would shortly drive through rush-hour traffic to Holy Name Church at Loyola University for the wedding rehearsal.
Jude sez, anent the numerous traffic problems we encountered from the hotel to the church: "If I had $100,000 to spend on my wedding, the first thing I'd spend it on would be for a police escort." Spoken like a Hollywood movie producer.
While we wait for the show to get on the road, I encounter an important character in the drama, and in Jude's life generally. Father William George, S.J., came down from West Virginia to officiate at Jude's wedding, at Jude's invitation. Father George was the president of Georgetown Prep in Bethesda, Maryland at the time of Katrina. Our family relocated to the Washington, D.C. area after the storm. It looked like it was going to be a long stay for us with Mary Ann's sister and her family. We contacted schools right away. Father George had us figured for refugees, and opened up the full welcome to Jude to sit out the disaster in Prep's dormitories and classrooms.
That was the moment when Jude became a man. At sixteen, he was on his own in this vaunted institution. His previous record was that of a mediocre, marginally motivated student. But he recognized what an opportunity had befallen him, and he made the most of it. While almost all his dozen other classmates had returned to Jesuit in New Orleans, he made himself an essential cog in the Prep machine. They invited him to stay on, which he did until graduating three years later, with the third-highest student award and an entirely new view of life.
Father George ultimately made the decisions that allowed Jude to reach this peak. He didn't have to. We were not desperate, needy people. He must have seen something and blessed it.
When Father George and I met up at the hotel, he gave me a hug. I was surprised he even remembered me. He also asked me to sell him a few of my cookbooks to bring home to friends. Here is a man who stays on top of everything.
Father George is an artist in the Catholic rituals. As we ran through the ceremony, he made dozens of little changes in the places where people would stand, how communion would be distributed (by the bride and groom, as the symbolic first meal they serve as a married couple), and every other detail. The lady in charge of the church seemed slightly puzzled but agreeable. Father George is a Jesuit, this is a Jesuit church, and a Jesuit usually gets his way when on what he perceives to be Jesuit turf.
The wedding party is small: Jude and Suzanne, MA and me, Suzanne's parents, Father George, the matron of honor, the best man and Mary Leigh. ML's role is fuzzy right to the end. I walk her and Mary Ann to the sacristy, then MA and I retreat to the front pew. A few minor issues worked out, we are done.
To the Roy Alciatore room at Antoine's for dinner. Roy was the grandson of Antoine, and the grandfather of Rick Blount, the current CEO of the restaurant. My waiter Charles Carter begins serving the ten bottles of wine I brought in, no two of which are the same. (My wine collection has breadth but no depth.) We begin with Dom Perignon and go down from there through two bottles of French bubbly and an assortment of California reds, most of which are fifteen or more years old.
I sit next to Father George. We have many matters to discuss. I am in the thrall of the Jesuits for fifty years now. I begin with the gratitude I have for his taking Jude in at Georgetown Prep. But we move on to the food. Soufflee potatoes, oysters Foch, shrimp remoulade, oysters Rockefeller and Bienville, crabmeat ravigote. Father George, who is very familiar with oysters Rockefeller in his native Northeast (same oysters there as ours) is impressed by Antoine's version. He is surprised that this is no variant, but the authentic original version of the dish. But every out-of-town gourmet refuses to believe that a dish with a name like that could have come from anywhere but New York.
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Oysters Bienville (the two in front) at Antoine's.
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It's a classic Antoine's feast. Loads of appetizers, followed by a straightforward main course. Puppy drum amandine or chicken Rochambeau, take your pick. The first time I dined at Antoine's, in 1969, I loved the Rochambeau, which never seems to change in its flavors (chicken breast, ham, a sweet brown sauce, and bearnaise).
The father of the groom is responsible for putting on this dinner, and for taking care of expenses incurred by invited guests from out of town. We invite the dozen or so of Jude's L.A. people to the dessert end of the Antoine's affair. It's a grand moment when the enormous baked Alaska enters the room, and everyone gets a big serving. One of these couples has a three-month-old baby. The father has had the baby with him at all the dinners and other assemblies. The baby is fascinated by all the people and merrymaking, and never lets out a peep. I take this as a good sign.
I drive home to the Cool Water Ranch. I didn't know that Mary Ann was spending the night at the Windsor Court, where all the important people have rooms. I get chewed out the next morning for not being there myself, but nobody had told me about this plan. My wedding suit is at home. But what really got me off that hook was noting that the dogs need to be let out and fed.
(Where are the pictures? I am being asked. I didn't take any, because we had two photographers doing the job. I don't have those photos in hand yet. I'll note when they arrive.)
