Writer, editor, and college professor Leigh Grossman married web designer Rowena Sandoval in a lovely twilight ceremony Friday on their Connecticut property that combined traditions, tastes, styles, and eras to a fare-thee-well. But the resulting mix was wonderful.
The ceremony took from Grossman’s Jewish heritage: it was a Sabbath evening service modified for the needs of a wedding. The color choices and the date (the numerologically auspicious 8 August, or 8/8/08) drew on Sandoval’s Chinese Filippino background. The setting itself—the ceremony took place at the ruins of an earlier 19th century barn on their property—nicely complemented the style choice the couple had made: guests were requested in formal attire (modern) with swords optional. Leigh later told me that many of his friends owned swords, but had far too few opportunities to wear them (indeed, the rabbi wore his father’s sword, and I can’t recall ever attending a Jewish ceremony where the rabbi was armed. The chuppah cover was designed and quilted by Leigh’s mother, and now she plans to incorporate it in a quilt for the bride and groom. After the ceremony, Leigh and Rowena changed from tuxedo and gown into formal Filippino attire (see picture, above). Much of the menu at the reception offered the flavors of the Philippines, and the cake toppers were a dragon and a Hello, Kitty. It was an incredibly eclectic evening.
The next day, out of town guests were invited back to the house for some quiet socializing, and it was then I got to experience the wonderful house (see photo at left). Leigh has lived there for some years, but not for all the house’s life. It was begun in 1732 (about 15 years after the town in which it stands, Pomfret, was incorporated), and in the 1740s, its owner, Ebenezer Grovesnor, was involved in a famous abortion case (papers from this time are the earliest documentation Leigh has of the house). It played host to President George Washington on his tour of the northeast, and though Washington didn’t sleep in it, he did stop for lunch and to water his horse. Leigh also has evidence that the house was owned by Robert Harris, who was President Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to Egypt and who built the barn in which the wedding ceremony took place. Currently, the house is home to about 20,000 books covering nearly every genre, seemingly dozens of rooms, four cats, and touches from throughout its life (the dining room table, for example, is made from the doors which formerly kept the barn closed).
Grossman is the author of the Wildside Gaming System and the proprietor of book production firm Swordsmith Productions.