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Twixie and Cowboy, both Brussels Griffons, at their wedding at Twixie’s home in Dallas on Dec. 4, 2021. (Jake Dockins/The New York Times)
(Year of the Wedding)
On December 4, 2021, Twixie and Cowboy, two 2-year-old Brussels Griffons, were married in the backyard of the bride’s (Twixie) home in Dallas. She wore a lace corset with embroidery and a layered tulle skirt. The groom wore a handmade silk and cotton tuxedo and a top hat.
In front of a makeshift chapel, the ceremony was presided over by Sam Palmmeter, whose Brussels Griffon Grinch attended and is a friend of the couple. Fig, another dog of the same breed, was in charge of the flowers.
Later, the four-legged guests enjoyed a puppy feast from Vestals Catering in Dallas (which also caters events for humans), as well as a coffee shop and activities including a ball pit.
The wedding cost regarding $25,000. Twixie’s owner, Tara Helwig, 37, a fitness trainer in Dallas, and Cowboy’s owner, Makayla Wilson, 22, an epidemiology data analyst in Phoenix, split the expenses.
They and their dogs met at a Brussels griffon hangout in February 2021. The dogs soon became “brides,” said Helwig, who began planning the wedding to Wilson following both owners and their pets visited. the other’s house.
Of the 40 Brussels griffons invited, 37 attended. “It turned out to be much larger than anticipated,” Helwig said.
Wilson, who handled the guest list, said that she and Helwig intended to have “a great dog wedding.”
“We didn’t want it to be just a photo shoot,” he added. “We wanted to do more than that.”
Celebrating the union of two animals, or even an animal and a human, is not a new concept, but when the pandemic forced many human couples to suspend marriage ceremonies, more people began to “think outside the box and write their own rules, and that’s just what happens when it comes to pet weddings,” said Hannah Nowack, editor of wedding registry and planning website The Knot.
Last June, the workers of Village Pet Supplies & Gifts, in Luzerne, Pennsylvania, celebrated the “holy gatrimonio” of Toby and Noelle, two cats from the area. Noelle’s owner, Melissa Sulima, an attorney in Pittston, Pennsylvania, came up with the idea following her cat fell in love with Toby, who lives at Village Pet Supplies, over videos they shared on Noelle’s Facebook page. her.
After a series of successful face-to-face dates, all the humans who witnessed their chemistry agreed that cats were made for each other, “and from there everything just exploded,” said Sulima, 42, who adopted to Noelle in 2019 from the Rescue Warriors Cat Rescue cat shelter in West Pittston, Pennsylvania.
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Guests and their dogs attend the wedding of Twixie and Cowboy, both Brussels Griffon dogs, at Twixie’s home in Dallas on Dec. 4, 2021. (Jake Dockins/The New York Times)
The couple was taken to their wedding on June 19 in a red wheelbarrow. Noelle wore a dress handmade by a co-founder of Rescue Warriors, and a member of the Village Pet Supplies team led a ceremony that included the reading of vows for both cats. Afterward, cupcakes and cider were served to the 40 human guests.
“They decorated it wonderfully,” said Sulima regarding the place of the celebration. “I was surprised”. She added that the two felines were only married six months: last December, Noelle died suddenly from complications of hyperthyroidism; she is believed to have been regarding 7 years old.
Despite efforts to find another mate for 10-year-old Toby, Sulima believes she will never marry once more. “Toby will be Noelle’s husband until the day she passes away,” she stated.
To attend the cat nuptials, they asked human guests to donate $15 to Rescue Warriors. Philanthropy was also the impetus behind a September 2021 mass dog wedding at Lions Park in Villa Park, Illinois, where 80 couples were married, just under half of the 178 who were married at an event held in 2007 in Littleton, Colorado, which became the largest dog wedding in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Leslie Allison-Seei, 61, president of a sweepstakes and promotions agency in Villa Park, arranged the nuptials in part to support area animal shelters at a time some were beginning to notice people abandoning more pets.
Early in the pandemic, “shelters were empty because people were out adopting dogs,” explained Allison-Seei, who volunteers at Northern Illinois Samoyed Assistance, one of 10 rescue shelters that received a donation following the event. “But when people started going back to work, they brought the dogs back.”
After paying a $25 registration fee, the dogs (and their owners) arrived at the wedding, where they found a traveling photographer and a flower-strewn archway, where Nick Cuzzone, the chairman of the Villa Park Town Board , presided over a ceremony.
Before Cuzzone married off any pair of dogs, those who arrived as single men or women had the opportunity to meet potential life partners at a designated “dog speed dating” area, said Allison-Seei, whose husky from 3 years old, Brack, married that day with Boo, a 5-year-old Samoyed dog.
“It was spectacular,” said Allison-Seei, president of the Villa Park Neighborhood Unification Community Focus Commission.
As in any wedding, experts say that the person in charge of planning a ceremony with pets or animals must give priority to the needs of the couple.
“If you don’t like to wear clothes or are stressed by crowds of strangers, it’s best to do without wedding dresses, guest lists and anything else that makes you feel uncomfortable,” Ingrid said in a statement. Newkirk, president of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
In considering their needs, others point out that the company should not be written off. Ellie Laks, founder of The Gentle Barn animal sanctuary, arranged a wedding between two cows, Dudley and Destiny, at her facility in Christian, Tennessee, in 2016. Laks, 54, likened their relationship to a “fairytale” romance. and explained that if animals might talk, many might choose to say ‘I do’ for the same reasons humans do.
“Humans and animals have the same desire for love and friendship, the same capacity to feel sadness, happiness and fear, and the same need to have a full life,” he concluded.