Gay, Gay Marriage, Weddings

Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 9.2.07 and 9.9.07: Weiner Kings

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That’s right — this is a combined edition of LEWW. Weep with joy, wedding-watchers!
Before we serve up this double shot, a request for input. In response to prompting from readers, when we’ve chosen the week’s top three couples lately, we’ve been giving a big edge to lawyer-lawyer couples. The result is that we’ve often found ourselves writing about double-JD weddings even when there are other couples with more impressive credentials (but only one JD).
To be honest, we’re not sure this is the right approach. It just feels wrong to pass over a dripping-with-prestige couple like this simply because a couple of unremarkable associates are getting hitched. Particularly during the height of the wedding season, there are often at least three lawyer-lawyer couples, so under our current system you’re basically out of contention if you marry outside the profession.
We’re considering lifting the heavy thumb we’ve put on the scales in favor of dual-lawyer couples, but before we do anything rash, we need to know what our readers think. What’s more interesting to you, ATL fans: lawyers marrying lawyers, or prestigious lawyers marrying other prestigious (and often more interesting) people? Make your opinion known, either in the comments or by e-mail.

Here are this week’s featured couples:
1.) Elaine Ewing and Christopher Viapiano
2.) Carl Roller and Daniel Weiner
3.) Deborah Lipman, Matthew Fox
4.) Katherine Downs, Peter Oppenheim

Read on for more about these three brides and five bridegrooms.

1.) Elaine Ewing and Christopher Viapiano
(Buy them a great white cereal bowl.)
The Case:
– The bride is Amherst/Harvard; the groom was summa at Hamilton College and got his JD with distinction from Stanford.
– Both the bride and the groom are associates at über-prestigious New York law firms. At only 23 (!), Elaine is younger than most of the paralegals at Cleary Gottlieb, and Chris is an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell.
The Case Against:
– It’s very common for the mother of the bride to seize control of the wedding, but Elaine’s mom outdid herself — she actually performed the couple’s ceremony! (She’s a Baptist minister, so we’ll assume she didn’t also DJ the reception.)

2.) Carl Roller and Daniel Weiner
(Buy them a vacuum pump.)
The Case:
– We think it adds a nice touch when same-sex weddings are actual weddings, like this one, which took place in Massachusetts.
– Carl went to Millersville University (improbably located in Millersville, PA, the NYT informs us) and got a law degree from Northeastern. Daniel was magna at Brown and got a JD cum laude from Harvard.
– Until last month, Carl was at Sugarman, Rogers, Barshak & Cohen, and Daniel was at Ropes & Gray. Now the newlyweds are moving to Washington, where Daniel will be at the DC office of Jenner & Block.
The Case Against:
– “Team Roller-Weiner” is perhaps overly evocative of . . . weiners, particularly for a couple with two.

3.) Deborah Lipman, Matthew Fox
(Buy them a butter dish.)
The Case:
– This couple met as law students at Stanford (they graduated in May). How delightful to have a bit of a west coast focus this week, with three Stanford grads! (Only two in this union, of course — we’re at least a decade away from polygamous marriages in the NYT.) For undergrad, Deborah was magna at Duke and Matthew was magna at Columbia.
– They won’t be home much, but they’ll still be seeing a lot of each other, because they’ll both be associates at Cravath!
The Case Against:
– “Cravath, Swaine & Moore, a New York law firm”?!? C’mon, wedding section editors — how would you feel if we called the NYT “a New York newspaper”? Not so great, huh? Please ensure that Cravath gets the definite article treatment from now on.

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4.) Katherine Downs, Peter Oppenheim
(Buy them a $475 soup tureen.)
The Case:
– They both have law degrees (from American University), although neither appears to be doing hard-core lawyering. Katherine is a legislative aide to Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, and Peter works at the Carmen Group, a lobbying firm. We wonder what he “lobbies” his Capitol Hill wife for at home.
– Their china is certainly expensive, but we’re putting it in the plus column because unlike some others we’ve seen, we think the pattern is beautiful (of course, we’re not the ones being hit up for a $70 dessert plate).
The Case Against:
– Their dual JDs from AU, plus their undergrad colleges (Hamilton for her, Colby for him) add up to a total educational prestige score that’s undeniably lower than the competition’s this week.
The Verdict:
First, there’s a correction that’s more interesting than all these couples: check out this notice correcting a wedding announcement that ran on October 24, 1988. Did Amy and David fail to notice the mistake when their wedding announcement originally ran 19 years ago?
Turning to the big decision of the week, it’s a close call between Team Ewing-Viapiano and Team Lipman-Fox, but in the end the dual-Stanford-dual-Cravath combination gets the nod. Congratulations, Team Lipman-Fox!

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