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A Caramoor Wedding Story |
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Home > What's New > Caramoor Blog > A Caramoor Wedding Story
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June 15, 2010
The Caramoor Wedding of Carole Demas & Stuart Allyn August 28th, 1983
My husband, Stuart Allyn, and I were married at Caramoor on August 28th, 1983. We live in Westchester County now, but at that time, we were Manhattan dwellers. Looking for a possible wedding site, we fell madly for Caramoor. The problem? As far as anyone knew, there had never been a wedding there before!
Caramoor’s management agreed to meet with us and was intrigued by the wedding idea but understandably concerned about protection of the beautiful property. Stuart and I had experience with details, having produced many shows and events. We wanted either a very intimate wedding, or a very large one. It was a second marriage for each of us. He was 30, I was 43. We had many many friends, business associates, and a ton of family to consider. At Caramoor, there would be room for everyone, so we went for the big one! After hearing all of our plans including preparations for traffic, parking, catering, bathrooms, cleanup, etc., Caramoor agreed to make our wedding an experiment. We were determined to ease their minds and show them that this could be done, even on a large scale, with lots of love, creativity, joy and no regrets.
My husband has a background in theatre and was/is a Bway Sound Designer/Acoustician/A/V Designer. I am an actress, singer. In my long and fortunately busy career, I created the role of Sandy in Bway’s original “Grease”. At the time of our wedding, my TV show for children (with my dearest friend, Paula Janis) “The Magic Garden”, was in its 11th year on the air. Stuart and I met while working on a "Magic Garden" project. Sherlock and Flapper, the two beloved puppets from our show (which became the most successful regional program in the history of children’s television) were in our wedding! I know this sounds pretty strange, but since the many children in our lives were part of our wedding party and Sherlock and Flapper had become "family", it seemed natural to put wreaths on their little puppet heads and pop them into flower bedecked strollers which were pushed by the older children.
At that time, Caramoor was not as developed as it is now. We tented the tennis court to provide an area of tables and chairs for our older guests and give us a protected spot in case, God forbid, it should rain. This had rarely, if ever, been done, so we had to find an appropriate tent rental and supervise the installation to be sure no harm would come to Caramoor's historic grounds.
On the big day, a busload of friends, our volunteer crew, arrived many hours early. We served breakfast in the orchard and proceeded with the decorating, laying out hundreds of chairs and blowing up gazillions of white balloons which soared from behind the hedge at the end of the wedding. (I’m not sure this is still considered a good thing to do, environmentally, but for all its great effect, it did create a small problem. Some of them popped in the heat as we said our vows.) We rented two film trailers to serve as nearby dressing rooms for us and our very large wedding party and emergency bathrooms for guests (the on-site bathrooms were some distance away in 1983).
Stuart and I arrived, in jeans, at 5am. In the sweet green Caramoor morning, awakening birds were singing their hearts out. My own heart was bursting with gratitude to Caramoor. A friend delivered the truckload of charming pots of table flowers he had grown and I did all of the table décor before changing into my gown. The Mel Lewis Orchestra, friends of ours, played processional music written for the occasion, mostly with brass that rang through the air to everyone spread out in white chairs across the huge lawn. Paula guided the children (and puppets!) through the big Caramoor gate, our friend Eddie applied his considerable stage manager skills to many of the other details, and we were off in a parade of pastels and flowers, ring pillows and rose petals, to the arbor. Special guests in aisle seats raised bowers of birch branches, to which we had tied hundreds of streaming ribbons, to make a long canopy for the processional. It was so pretty and thrilling I could hardly walk. Diana Gould's designers stuffed the Caramoor arbor with white blooms, making a lovely hoopa. We were married by a priest and a rabbi (it was not so easy to find clergy who would do this 27 years ago), with prayers in Hebrew for Stuart, Greek and Polish for me, singing by friends and family and as many traditions involving challah, walking around the table, the exchange of Greek wedding crowns, breaking plates and glasses, etc. as could reasonably be included. I sang a song to my husband. I continue to sing at weddings, but my own was so emotional for me- one look at my handsome husband and I momentarily forgot the words. Our reception was a huge picnic, with individual lunches – many hundreds of them- packed in baskets appropriate for children, single guests and couples. Many of our guests sat on the grass, on large checkered table cloths, under the Caramoor trees.
We had a chocolate (Stuart's favorite) wedding cake, made to resemble the big Manhattan building we lived in, complete with little cars parked around the edge, miniature roof garden plantings in tiny barrels and little bride and groom dolls in our wooden hot tub on the top, wearing top hat and veil and that's all...). Strawberries in the champagne were a gift from an owner of Fairway, the Manhattan market where I had shopped for years. Today, Caramoor's professional staff is there to attend to every detail, but we were fortunate to have loving hands all around us, including dear friends from The Westchester Broadway Theatre, who certainly know how to handle a production! For the ceremony and the reception, lots of music- more songs, Greek dancing- and the birds! The day was everything we had worked to create— elegant, fun, memorable- and we were able to include pretty much everyone in our lives, to thank them all for having been with us so far. My sister gifted us with aerial photos - they are such fun to see.
All day, it was hot and hazy. I feared it would rain. We were comfortable in the cool, cotton poet shirts we made to wear for the reception. After everyone was gone, Stuart and I stood there, hand in hand in that magical place, and just grinned at each other. In our trailer, we changed into our jeans and set to work, picking up the last of the garbage, stray baskets, etc. and organizing the rented items to be returned, until we were satisfied that Caramoor would feel we had been worthy of their trust.
A limo was waiting to drive us back into the city just as the thunder and lightning crashed and the heavens opened. The Saw Mill Parkway was almost completely flooded. It took us hours to get home- the first chance we’d had to spend any real time together all day! A bus full of gifts and wedding trimmings was waiting at our door. Relatives helped unload, filling the elevator with boxes, flower baskets, bowers and ribbons. The good news is we are still happily married, our wedding is finally all paid for and nobody has ever forgotten it! Surely there were easier ways to have a wedding, but think of the fun we'd have missed. Looking back, we wonder where all of that energy came from. Love can make you crazy!
Best of all, we found we had begun Caramoor’s tradition of being a perfect place for a wedding. Leave the first comment
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