Allen & Overy, Gay, New York Times, Weddings

Legal Eagle Wedding Watch June 2010: Board-dom

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Most weeks nowadays, the New York Times weddings announcements — and our coverage of same — focus quite properly on the newlyweds and their impressive accomplishments. But occasionally, a few announcements hearken back to a simpler day, when nobody cared much about the bride and groom, because the game of social one-upmanship was played on the parental level.

This is one of those weeks. Our featured newlyweds are impressive, but some of their parents are even more so. The finalists:

1. Tenley Laserson and Geoffrey Chepiga

2. Charlotte Anne Levy and David Gudis

3. Mara Zusman and Jeremy Greenberg

4. Gary Lowman and Brock McCormack

More on these couples and their illustrious parents, after the jump.

1. Tenley Laserson and Geoffrey Chepiga
(Buy them a bed tray.)

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The Case:
– This bride was magna at Princeton and has a JD from Harvard. She’s an associate at Davis Polk. Her mom is president of the Moody’s Foundation and is on a couple of moderately prestigious boards in New York. Her dad is a former managing director of the former Chemical Bank.
– As for the groom, ginger doesn’t normally tempt LEWW’s taste buds, but we’d make an exception in this case — he’s yummy! He was cum laude at Yale and has a JD from Yale Law School as well as a master’s from Cambridge. He’s an associate at Paul Weiss.

The Case Against:
– Lawyer overload! Geoff’s mom is a partner at Allen & Overy. And Geoff’s dad, a heavy hitter at Simpson Thacher, once had a highly charged run-in with this site’s founder that necessitated a change of underwear for one of them.

2. Charlotte Anne Levy and David Gudis
(Buy them a cashmere throw.)

The Case:
– This bride’s family must have some serious assets. You can tell by all the schools her parents are trustees of: Brown, Rockefeller, and Juilliard for her mom, and Penn and Penn Law for her dad. And — holy cow, what a coincidence! — Charlotte happens to be a graduate of Brown and Penn Law. To be fair, she also has a master’s from the London School of Economics. And she’s working as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, which is a gritty, non-princess-y job. In fact, if you changed her surname from Levy to Lancaster, this would sound like the beginning of a Mary Higgins Clark novel.
– The groom, whose parents don’t appear to be trustees of anything, is a second-year surgical resident in head and neck surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated cum laude from Columbia.

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The Case Against:
– How do rich people pick such great names for their kids? Charlotte’s name was a lowly number 283 on the list when she was born in 1983. Now it’s number 68 and ultra-trendy. And this year’s number 283 is Jasmin, which sounds awful to us, but who knows? Rich people know, that’s who.

3. Mara Zusman and Jeremy Greenberg
(Buy them a pasta machine.)

The Case:
– This bride’s sterling resume includes an undergraduate degree, cum laude, from Princeton and a JD from Harvard. She’s employed as an assistant United States attorney for the District of Maryland.
– Her father is an important-sounding cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

The Case Against:
– The groom, a graduate of Syracuse, is a co-founder of a firm called Greek Capital Management. Sounds intriguing, if a little ambiguous. Do they manage capital only for persons of Greek descent? Do they manage capital in a Greek manner? No. They, um, collect dues for fraternities and sororities. Peruse their website and marvel at the inanity (“Do you hate having to knock on every door to collect $10 for the latest rush shirt?”).

4. Gary Lowman and Brock McCormack
(Buy them season one of Glee.)

The Case:
– These two cuties met as 1Ls at Wake Forest. Gary (left) also has an undergrad degree from Wake, summa cum laude; Brock was cum laude at Tufts.
– Gary, who’s been training to be a Foreign Service officer, is about to head to Shanghai for a two-year assignment as a consular officer. Brock was an associate at Fisher & Phillips, an Atlanta firm, until September. We assume he’ll be tagging along with Gary to China.

The Case Against:
– Fans and critics of this column know that we love gayness. Love it. But their write-up is so over-the-top it reads like a parody:

“He would come over to my house, and we would play different Broadway soundtracks and sing along,” Mr. McCormack said. “We both knew all the words to ‘Wicked,’ and that’s how we bonded.”

You think some stereotypes are being challenged when you get to the part about how they hooked up at a Super Bowl party, but . . . well, not so much.

The Verdict:
With four JDs and four instances of Biglaw employment, Team Laserson-Chepiga emerges triumphant. Congratulations to all the happy couples!

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