Welcome To
Our Wedding
2 p.m.
Saturday, September 6, 2009
Berkeley Cohousing
Sacramento Street
Berkeley, California
We feel very grateful to have found each other. In that spirit, we welcome you to our wedding.
Judy Gumbo Albert & David Mendel Dobkin
The Day
Music by: Gerry Tenney, Rabbi: Margaret Holub. Chuppah Holders: Jessica Albert (Judy and Stew’s daughter,) Rio Russell (David’s nephew,) Miriam Clavir (Judy’s sister,) Elizabeth O’Conner (David and Donna’s friend.) Flower Children: Cohousers Gabriella Almeida-Gere, Erica Carleton-Ferris & Hannah Goldberg.
After the ceremony, the bar opens & appetizers are served. The meal, catered by Viva La Paz! & you, begins shortly in the Common House. After meal toasts, MC’d by Jessica, are followed by chocolate soufflé wedding cake with lemon curd by Sweet Adeline Bakeshop & dancing in the Common House, DJ’d by Steve Gere.
Special Welcome To Guests From Afar: Korea, Israel & England; Vancouver & Ontario Canada; Boston, Bedford & Cambridge; New York & New Jersey; Washington D.C. & Chicago; Boise & Portland; Santa Fe & Tucson; San Diego, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Sonoma, Pt. Reyes & Elk.
Special Thanks To: The DAWG (Dobkin/Albert Wedding Group) Jeanne Friedman, Merle Weiner & on-site coordinator extraordinaire Kim Seashore. Also to Rabbi Margaret of the Mendocino Coast Jewish Community, Gerry Tenney of California Klezmer, Russell Bass of Viva La Paz! Catering, & Coho member/D.J. Steve Gere. Plants & flowers by D’jour Floral & Antiques are grown within 140 miles of Berkeley. Our chuppah was handmade by Anne Bernstein for her & Ringo Hallinan’s wedding.
Berkeley Cohousing, of which David is a founding member, is a community of 14 households, whose members range in age from 2 to 79. Ours is one of the earliest of 128 established cohousing communities in North America. We own or rent our own homes & cook & eat together three days a week. Community decisions are made by consensus. Thank you to everyone at the community for your support, efforts & participation in our wedding.
Bathrooms are located in Units E, F, J & the Common House. Smoking is permitted only outside the front gate. Please take a table plant & party favor with you.
The Ceremony*
The chuppah, held aloft by family & close friends, is open on all sides to welcome guests, the weather & Judy & David’s new life. Its covering reminds us of the Shekinah, the female aspect of the divine. Judy & David circle each other to knit together their two individual souls. They drink wine to celebrate the consent of family, friends & community to this marriage. We all take a moment to honor loved ones who are no longer with us. David gives Judy a ring & Judy gives David a frog fetish. The ring and frog fetish symbolize their commitment to take care of each other on the material plane. Together with Rabbi Margaret they read their ketubah, a contract which articulates the fundamental principles on which their married life will be based. The wedding guests stand & touch the person next to them to create a human chain. Together as a community, everyone sends what is in her or his heart to Judy & David. David & Judy drink a second cup of wine & then break a glass which symbolizes to them the fragility of life. When they leave the chuppah, they cannot go back to who they were before. Judy & David go off to spend the first few moments of their married life together. Mazel-Tov! Let the party begin! * Freely adapted from the traditional Jewish marriage ceremony. May the day come quickly when our gay & lesbian relatives & friends are no longer denied this basic human right. The Ketubah On the 17th day of Elul, 5769, corresponding to the 6th day of September, 2009, in Berkeley, California, we, Judy Gumbo Albert and David Mendel Dobkin, celebrate with our communities our choice of each other as husband and wife. We will build a life of love, respect and support as we age together. We pledge to fill our lives with JACCFIX -- joy, affection, comfort, companionship, friendship, intimacy and sex. We promise to appreciate each other; to be equal partners in decision-making; to take each other’s feelings into account; to settle our differences through self-examination and compromise; to forgive, and learn to live with, each other’s eccentricities and fuck-ups. We declare our desire to become one in body and spirit, while remaining true to our essential selves, and to sustain each other in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live. We vow to live our lives with reverence for the mysterious, with compassion for each other and in the hope that the peoples of the earth will achieve freedom, justice and equality and that our planet will attain ecological balance. The Ketubah, or marriage contract, was signed today by: Judy, David & Rabbi Margaret Holub with Nina Falk and Hannah Kranzberg as witnesses.