Weddings and Commitments

While the Rev. Janie Spahr is being reprimanded from doing what she was called to do--perform weddings, which is what we ministers do--there are these stories of those who are now wedded to one another. From the NYT.com:

Christina Goodridge Page and Jennifer Ruth Mayer celebrated their partnership on Saturday with a commitment ceremony in Pescadero, Calif. Leong Ping Foong, a friend of the couple, led the ceremony in the lodge at Costanoa, a resort.

Elizabeth Gilliam

Ms. Page (left), 41, is the director of climate and energy strategy at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, Calif. She graduated from Brown and received a master’s in environmental management from Yale. She is a daughter of Cassandra Nickerson Blattner of Wellesley, Mass., and James G. Page of Newton, Mass., and is a stepdaughter of Louise Knapp Page and of David J. Blattner Jr.

Ms. Mayer, 40, is the director of strategic planning in the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Innovative Program Delivery; she works in the agency’s San Francisco office. She also graduated from Brown and received an M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the daughter of Marjorie MacClellan Mayer of Arlington, Va., and the late James I. Mayer.

And this:

Janet Maureen Gillespie and Pamela Louise Simpson were married Saturday in Holderness, N.H. The Rev. Mary E. Haddad, an Episcopal priest, performed the ceremony at the Chocorua Island Chapel.

The couple met as graduate students at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., from which Ms. Gillespie earned a master’s in voice performance and pedagogy and Ms. Simpson received a master’s in music education and choral conducting.

Ms. Gillespie (left), 46, is a vocal and general music teacher at Irvington Middle School and Irvington High School, public schools in Irvington, N.Y. In 2007 and 2001 and for several years in the 1990s, she was a member of the chorus at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. She graduated from Bennington College.

She is the daughter of Catherine L. Gillespie and James H. Gillespie, both of Phoenix. Her father retired as a claims supervisor there with the American States Insurance Company. Her mother, who is also retired, was a secretary in the Arizona Department of Economic Security in Phoenix. Ms. Gillespie is the stepdaughter of Helen M. Gillespie.

Ms. Simpson, 50, is the performing arts department leader and the choral music director at the Bronxville School, a public school in Bronxville, N.Y. She is also the associate conductor at Umbrian Serenades, a summer choral program in Spoleto. Ms. Simpson graduated from Duquesne University, and in 1985 and 1986 was a Fulbright scholar at the Orff Institute in Salzburg, Austria, from which she received a diploma in music and movement education.

She is a daughter of Charlotte L. Simpson and Robert B. Simpson, who live in Sarasota, Fla., and in Waterville Valley, N.H. Ms. Simpson’s father retired as the principal of Newfound Regional High School in Bristol, N.H. Her mother, who is also retired, was the director of health services at the New Hampton School, a college preparatory school in New Hampton, N.H.

Ms. Simpson’s previous marriage ended in divorce.

Pace!

B