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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Couple of the Year Semifinals

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Here it is: The long-overdue Legal Eagle 2009 Couple of the Year battle. Twelve Couple of the Month winners, selected by readers, are back and up for consideration for 2009’s top LEWW honor.
To streamline the voting process, we’ve ranked the twelve couples according to our own standards and grouped them into three pools of four couples each, seeded 1-4. The three winners will move on for one more round of voting. So even though our own subjective biases came into play for the seeding, readers are free to override us by picking a lower seed to move on.
Review the couples — perhaps you know some of them? — and vote for your favorites to advance to the final round, after the jump.


Click on each couple’s name to read our original write-ups.
POOL ONE

#4: Mr. and Mrs. November, Lisa Rockefeller and Edward Sebelius, are the fourth seed in this pool. The bride is a descendant of the Standard Oil Rockefellers; the groom’s the son of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. He thought she was “cute as a button,” but some of our commenters disagreed.


#3: Tracy Zuckerman and Ryan Van Grack, our wholesome-looking Mr. and Mrs. April, are both HLS grads. The adorable bride works for a non-profit; the groom’s an associate at Williams & Connolly.


#2: Sabrina Charles and Jamie Dycus, our May winners, have the number two spot. The stunning Wachtell associate and her ACLU-fellow groom met as 1Ls at YLS. We thought they were utterly fabulous, and our commenters agreed.


#1: Grabbing the top seed in our first group are Mr. and Mrs. September, Karen Dunn and Brian Netter. Both YLS grads, these two have a slew of impressive credentials, including in his-‘n’-hers SCOTUS clerkships. We described their prestige as “eye-watering,” and they’re our favorite to win it all.

POOL TWO:
#4: There’s no photo of Rachel Lu and Jimmy Gao, our December winners, so they’re automatically a fourth seed. They’re both HLS grads and Biglaw associates in Hong Kong. They have a bunny.
#3: March winners Maeve Townsend and David McKean, whom their friends call “Maevid,” are the number three seed. The bride is a granddaughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and has a tattoo, which set our comments section ablaze. We gave Maevid demerits for having “the whitest wedding party we’ve ever seen.”


#2: June’s couple of the month, Devon Quasha and Jeffrey Thorn, are this group’s second seed. The bride is a lawyer/doctor; the groom’s a mere lawyer. Four of their five degrees are from Harvard. LEWW sensed something “a little desperate and adrift” about them.

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#1: The top seed: Kendall Burman and Eric Volkman, our February winners. We loved the bride’s position of power as White House associate counsel but noted that her daddy helped get her the job. And the Obama administration seemed a lot cooler back in February.

POOL THREE

#4: Caroline Nyenke and LaRue Robinson, Mr. and Mrs. August, are the fourth seed in our final group. The groom’s a Mayer associate; the bride’s in medical school. We pronounced them “cute-cute-cute.”


#3: Courtney Shea and Stephen Ball Jr., Mr. and Mrs. January, are seeded third. We thought they looked “friendly and normal” and found the groom’s all-Vermont background “[w]eirdly refreshing.”


#2: The society pages loved the number two seed in this pool, October champions Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. The bride’s a former model and the daughter of “The Donald.” The groom’s the publisher of The New York Observer and the son of real estate mogul and felon Charles Kushner.

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#1: Mr. and Mrs. July have the top seed in this pool. Laura Hammond and Christopher Hemphill lost points for looking chemistry-free in their photo, but the groom was first in his class at Stanford Law and clerked for Posner and Scalia. Their smiles are chilly, but this couple sizzles with prestige.

Thank you for voting! Check back on Friday to cast your final vote for Couple of the Year.

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