Job Security: The NYT Weddings & Celebrations

I read these things and ask, "Why . . . why?!" The amount of information that people wish to share in a wedding announcement just astounds me.

This week, we hear loudly the biological and financial security clock of Jes ticking away . . .

Jes Gordon and Bill Marmor

BY the time Jes Gordon was 15, she was already working as a florist. At 25, she was juggling multiple weddings every weekend at Tavern on the Green.

“She’s like the Tasmanian Devil,” said Tracy Rohrer, an events manager, linking her quick-moving boss with the whirling Looney Tunes character.

I am assuming economic times are hard, hence why Jes can't go with a double "ss" in her name. Oh, and I'm not sure that was a bit of a back-handed insult by an employee, since Taz was also associated with death, destruction, and the propensity to eat everything and anything.

Now 39, Ms. Gordon laughs loudly when describing the benefits and drawbacks of having attention deficit disorder. She curses constantly and said she sleeps little, harnessing her condition into creating weddings and parties with budgets both small and in seven figures. But marriage for herself? Tricky.

ADD or Tourettes? Or how about Jes is just a leeeeeeetle bit bi-polar? So far we've got the picture of a woman who has no volume control, can make a merchant marine blush with her language, and likely has a triple espresso from Starbucks going at all times that only serves to contribute to the steamer trunks she's got going under her eyes. And so the idea of someone buying into that is tricky? Who'd a-thunk! Frankly, the imagery of her harnessing anything is already disturbing me.

Her mother had married three times and her father, four. Ms. Gordon herself had a marriage annulled when she was 18. None of that, she insists, had anything to do with her remaining persistently single.

Excuse me . . . ah HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can't write comedy like this . . . back to the story.

But by summer 2006, she was badly in need of stability, not excitement. Her firm, Proper Fun, was deeply in debt, in part because of the cost of opening a Los Angeles branch.

“I was shattered,” Ms. Gordon said “I was entertaining ways of giving up for the first time in my career.” Depression set in. “I was crying a lot. Working out a lot.”

"My local CVS Drugs was making a mint off of me. I didn't know what to do. I needed some type of rescue somehow!"

She was on the treadmill at a Los Angeles gym that fall when she spotted Bill Marmor doing crunches on a mat nearby.

“He looked so nice.” Ms. Gordon recalled. “I was at hell’s door and I needed someone to hold my hand.”

Cue the knight in shining armor. Because, after all, when you're at hell's door, never entertain the thought that you have problems you need to address yourself. Instead, find someone to share them with. And since sleep doesn't rank high in priority, where better a place than the 24 Hours Fitness?

But Mr. Marmor, who had divorced a year earlier, was not in much of a position to offer a hand or shoulder. “I was pretty good of a mess internally,” Mr. Marmor, now 43, said of the divorce. “I didn’t see it coming.”

She knows how to pick 'em, that Jes. But don't let a little thing like the other person's problems deter you - instead, go in for the kill.

Ms. Gordon took charge, insisting that her trainer set her up — this despite having been warned of Mr. Marmor’s recent marital troubles. So her trainer and his trainer agreed to be chaperones on a dinner date in Santa Monica, Calif.

Okay, I live in Southern California. This is the type of thing that just feeds the stereotype we have of being in the land of fruits and nuts. If you watch this improbable story lines on sitcoms and daytime soaps . . . yes, people are that crazy. These people are adults over the age of 35 and had their fitness trainers accompany them on a first date. Let that last sentence soak in. Oh, and I hope the trainers charged them for the time.

But Mr. Marmor, an editor of television commercials who owns Rex Edit, a video post-production company in Los Angeles, did not call.

“The date was great,” said Mr. Marmor, a Los Angeles native who at age 15 learned to fend for himself after his father died. “I didn’t follow up right away because some of the battle scars of the first marriage took time getting rid of.” Its dissolution, he said, “brought me back to my dad’s death. People I loved leave me.”

But Ms. Gordon felt unresolved. Why hadn’t he called? “He wasn’t my type at all, but there was a force — there was a foggy smoke that hit me,” she said.

Maybe because he was afraid she's bring her OB-GYN on the next date and insist his proctologist come along too? You know, there is nothing like indulging in some self-psychoanalysis on the pages of the New York Times. As for Jes, let me get this straight - you're facing a nervous breakdown, he's got baggage from a freshly signed divorce, you take your personal trainers on a date, he's not your type at all, but you feel "unresolved" because he didn't call you after the date? Did it ever occur to you that this might be a good thing?

By the way, Bill, your father died - sad, true, but unless you killed him, this isn't about you, so enough with the line, "People I loved leave me." Some 28 years later it's not about Dad - the first Mrs. Marmor wanted out!

So that she could see him again, she arranged a small get-together with Mr. Marmor and the trainers at her place in Los Angeles. On the night of the party, one trainer canceled and the other wanted to meet later. Ms. Gordon and Mr. Marmor were on their own.

And that’s when he discovered one of her darkest secrets.

It's one thing when you cannot avoid having a train wreck. It's another when you actually arrange it.

Can we guess what the darkest secret is? She's a transgender? She's into bondage? She has the stuffed members of previous conquests lining her bedroom dresser?!

“I had a Hormel party platter in my refrigerator,” she said, describing the supermarket tray of cubed cheeses and meats she was preparing to serve at her soirée.

They laughed together at the lowbrow food choice this party planning professional had made. “He knew the real me from the first night,” she said. Still, Mr. Marmor, described by friends as a fanatical Los Angeles Lakers fan who is also partial to horror films, was hesitant. He did not want to get hurt again.

Hey, I was going in the right direction with a "slash-n-gore" film. Though Spam and Cheez Whiz is pretty horrific, unless you're stuck at a combination bridal/baby shower in Fontana where Nascar is the theme. And pretty horrific is learning that processed meat and cheese is the "real" Jes. But then, if the best your friends can say about you is an obsession with over-paid miscreants and movies that have high production costs for Red Dye #2, maybe this pairing makes sense.

After a few more dates, he let down his guard. “I refuse to let my fears, anxieties or scars hold me back,” he said.

And Ms. Gordon confided her financial troubles to Mr. Marmor, who later helped her rebuild her business. “He’s the first man I’ve ever cried in front of,” she said.

“Bill accepted immediately that I was constantly on a plane,” Ms. Gordon said. “That made me feel safe to make the commitment.”

Maybe that made Bill feel safe, too, Jes . . . you wouldn't be around. Especially during play-off season. And you got out of that sticky financial situation - score! Crying women works wonders with "loans" from sympathetic men.

But don't let economics deter you . . .

They set a $40,000 budget, bearing the cost themselves. Fittingly, Ms. Gordon chose January to get an off-season price at the Bacara Resort and Spa in Santa Barbara, Calif. A friend provided discounted D.J. services, but she said she paid full price for everything else. “This is how people make a living,” Ms. Gordon said. “It’s a business, not a hobby.”

Okay, let me be a cynic for a moment. 2-1/2 years ago, Jes was "deeply in debt." At this point, she meets Bill, who has his own business. I am willing to bet that helping her to "rebuild" her business meant "loans" from him. Her business is wedding planning and she paid full price for everything? The way I see it, either (a) people in the business hate her; (b) she is a lousy businesswoman; or (c) she got a commission off of the vendors, as wedding plannners do, that she didn't tell old Bill about. And who do you think paid for most of the $40,000?

On the morning of Jan. 24, Ms. Gordon was placing peacock feathers in her flower arrangements and tossing animal-print throws on couches in the Spanish Colonial style room.

At 7 sharp that evening, dressed in an arresting gunmetal-colored dress, she walked the aisle with Mr. Marmor, to their officiant, Joshua Weinstein, a half brother of the bride who had become a minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism for the occasion.

I always love the gesture of people who seek ordination "just for the occasion," and especially with the Church of Spiritual Humanism - it brings such a religious aspect to the ceremony. And screw that romance theme for a wedding - animal prints. A successful hunt must be celebrated.

The bride and bridegroom, fearing they would be overwhelmed with emotion, had Mr. Weinstein read the vows each had written to the other. Mr. Marmor’s went: “Critically wounded, you nursed me, guided me, even prodded me when needed.” It was a profoundly honest moment that concluded with, “But you got me here — got us here.”

Oh hell yeah, Bill . . . and don't you ever forget it. Now, about those stuffed members . . .