I Had the Honor of Officiating at a Wonderful Wedding!
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/fashion/weddings/07vows.html
Vows
Anya Emerson and Jonah Staw
NAVARRO, CALIF., MAY 24 The couple received flowers for her bouquet. By DEVAN SIPHER Published: June 6, 2009
NOTHING matches, but anything goes.
Later, they faced a wedding-cake-shaped piñata.
That’s the slogan of LittleMissMatched, an offbeat New York clothing firm that sells unmatched socks in vibrant color-coordinated patterns. It is also in many ways the outlook of the company’s chief executive and co-founder, Jonah Staw.
“I’ve never dealt well with rules,” said Mr. Staw, with self-aware humor. “I have a fear of being constrained.”
So it may be unsurprising that he was dating Anya Emerson for more than six years before they became engaged. Even then, it was Ms. Emerson who asked for his hand in marriage.
His mother, Jane Anne Staw, said Mr. Staw was very independent “ starting from birth,” the kind of kid who was out of the house almost as soon as he could walk.
A budding entrepreneur at 5, Mr. Staw had a garage sale for his unused toys, and at 8 he sold handmade postcards to local stores in Oakland, Calif.
In contrast, Ms. Emerson, 31 and a lawyer at the nonprofit New York Legal Assistance Group, is by nature and profession a rules follower. But, she said, “I appreciate being with someone who encourages me to break a rule or take a chance.”
The couple, who both attended the same Oakland high school, first spoke in 2001 at an alumni Christmas party. “It was a disaster,” Mr. Staw, 33, recalled of his initial flirtation. His brash and breezy style flamed out when countered by her cautious cool-headedness.
“Anya is elusive,” he said, noting that unlike himself she didn’t feel compelled to charm strangers. “She saves a piece of who she is for people she cares about.”
He persisted, and after the intervention of mutual friends she relinquished her e-mail address. But she remained hesitant, because after the holidays she was returning to Ecuador, where she was a volunteer English teacher.
Still, she said she found Mr. Staw, a magna cum laude graduate of Brown, cute and intriguing. They managed to squeeze in two dinner dates in one week. “I can’t remember being ever so attracted to someone,” he said.
Once back in Quito, Ecuador, Ms. Emerson said she couldn’t stop thinking about him. So for their third date, she invited him on a 10-day trip to Peru.
“In my relationships before Anya, I was always the one challenging my partners,” said Mr. Staw, who was excited by her risk-taking. So much so, that it wasn’t until his arrival at the Lima airport in February that he questioned his own derring-do.
“You think you know someone a little bit because you spent two nights having dinner, and you realize you don’t know anything about them,” he said.
They quickly learned that they had very different travel styles. Ms. Emerson likes to read guidebooks cover to cover, and Mr. Staw prefers to wing it.
But they were united as they hiked in the tropical forest encountering kaleidoscopic orchids along the Inca Trail, and they stood in awed embrace as the glory of Machu Picchu spread out before them.
By the end of the trip, she had fallen in love with him, but she wasn’t sure if he felt the same.
In July, having completed her teaching stint, Ms. Emerson moved back to the Bay Area, and they started spending much of their time together. Only a couple of months later she suffered a severe repetitive stress injury from typing. Her wrists were put in plastic casts, and she needed Mr. Staw’s assistance with dressing and other basic daily functions.
“Jonah was freaking out about what he got himself into,” she said, while she resented needing his help. Ms. Emerson, who graduated with distinction from Stanford and has a master’s in history from Oxford, prided herself on her intellectual and physical autonomy. “I was pretty mad at him, because I was the one whose life was in crisis, not him,” she said.
“My first instinct was flight,” Mr. Staw conceded. “I was scared and uncomfortable, but I’m stubborn and strong-willed, too.” So he wasn’t going to give up on someone he realized he loved. “I would have been the ultimate failure if I had run away.”
He did not, and her symptoms abated. They officially moved in together in January 2004, before relocating to New York, where she attended law school at Columbia.
By 2008, she had passed the bar, and they had lived together more than four years. “I was tired of calling him my boyfriend,” Ms. Emerson said. “I didn’t think that described our relationship well enough.”
She said she thought that it was undignified to drop hints to get him to propose, and she doubted that he would volunteer to be legally bridled. So she decided it was time for some rule-breaking of her own, and it was Ms. Emerson who got down on one knee as they hiked in the Catskills last April.
“It felt like I was loved in a tremendously honest and pure way,” he said, recalling his surprise and ardent gratitude. “She was making it easy for me. All I had to do was say yes.”
On May 24, they were joined by 175 friends and family members under a vault of blue sky in the northern California town of Navarro, where many of their guests had helped the couple build a hilltop vacation home.
Mr. Staw, in mismatched socks, contentedly held Ms. Emerson’s hand beneath a wedding canopy. The bride stood stately and erect, echoing the Redwoods that surrounded them as Judith Steinhart, a Universal Life minister, led them in their vows.
“Just a month ago, Jonah and Anya, didn’t know they could see to the far end of the valley,” Ms. Steinhart said, referring metaphorically and literally to a recent clearing of scrub brush on the property. “You just have to be open to the possibilities.”
After dining on tacos and tamales, their guests toasted and roasted the couple, zeroing in on the bridegroom’s boyhood penchant for T-bills over T-ball.
“I am a materialist who cares about money, and Anya’s all about giving back,” Mr. Staw happily acknowledged. “Mismatching is the ultimate match.”
Louise Rafkin contributed to this article.
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