While Steph was getting ready for work in Washington, D.C., she checked her email. There was one from the Big Green Pizza Truck. “We saw what’s going on at Lighthouse,” it read. “Let us know if you need an alternative plan.” Steph, who asked to be identified by only her first name for this article, received that email on Thursday morning. She had a wedding planned with her fiancée at Lighthouse Point Park’s century-old carousel building for Saturday, Aug. 22, a little less than two weeks away. The planning had been in the works for a year. A photographer, DJ, and the pizza truck were lined up. For their sizeable guest list, there were plane tickets reserved, hotel rooms booked. Steph’s fiancée grew up skipping the waves and riding the carousel at Lighthouse Point. Her dream, of being wed in that magical place, was about to be realized. That was before a high-wind storm unleashed its fury early Thursday morning, toppling 73 trees, causing serious damage to the carousel building, and indefinitely shuttering the waterfront park to the public. According to city spokesperson Lenny Speiller, there were 11 weddings planned at the Lighthouse carousel building this season, and 27 total events. “We spent the next two days making phone calls and sending emails, just trying to figure out what to do,” Steph told the Independent on Sunday as she drove from D.C. to New Haven. “A lot of places wanted to help but they already had bookings.” “It was tough for us because it was so close,” she continued. “We were really having a hard time letting go of our dreams of getting married on the beach.” Meanwhile, a friend of the couple, Mark Aronson, was making his own inquiries. An artist, as well as the senior paintings conservator at the Yale Center for British Art and longtime New Haven resident, he asked himself who he knew who could help. One call went to his former alder, Caroline Tanbee Smith. As it happened, she had already sprung into action, reaching out to possible wedding sites — among them, the Lost in New Haven museum and Edgerton Park. “It was a no-brainer,” said Cynthia Bannon, Lost in New Haven’s managing director. “If you grew up around here, you grew up with the lighthouse and the carousel and its own historic building, so it’s a core memory for all of us.” While the Hamilton Street museum is an event space and not a wedding venue, “we’re not closed off to entertain any new opportunities to help our neighbors in crisis,” she said. She reported on Monday afternoon that there’s a plan for one of the couples to see the space as the museum has their date available. Sean Duffy, a board member and past president of the Edgerton Park Conservancy, had a similar take. He told Tanbee Smith that Edgerton would be happy to field calls from the marooned couples. “We’re a public park, not a wedding venue, but if it works with dates, we’ll be happy to have them,” he said, stressing the do-it-yourself nature of the events. At the same time, Aronson, the couple’s friend, was searching in his contacts for Jackie Gleisner, an artist and the communications manager at the Yale Center for British Art, and, as Aronson put it, “someone who knows a lot of people.” Call my husband, she told him, referring to Ryan Paxton, executive director of the Eli Whitney Museum. The evening was available. Steph’s wedding dinner will take place there this Saturday.   All the while, Aronson was viewing photos of the devastation, including the 129 trees damaged by the storm. “I looked at all those trees and I thought, ‘I could donate a tree to replace one of the downed ones,’” he recalled. “And do it in the name of the couple. Or we could plant a wedding grove with trees for all the displaced wedding parties.” He shared his idea with Tanbee Smith; the Urban Resources Initiative; and Sabrina Bruno, the longtime Lighthouse Park staffer and event coordinator at the park. Bruno immediately returned his email expressing enthusiasm and assuring him it would be part of “community conversations to come.” She also relayed the story of an older man who asked if he could get into the park to say goodbye to a special tree that had comforted him throughout his life. “This is a historic treasure that’s had deep significance to people and to this city over the decades, and we’re going to learn about that now,” said Lost in New Haven museum founder Robert Greenberg; on Monday, he was designing an exhibit with fragments of the destroyed carousel building. “It’s living history.” For Tanbee Smith, the devastation wrought by the storm has offered a pressure-test in the way New Haveners connect and support each other in times of crisis. So far, in her estimation, the Elm City has aced the test. It’s all the venues that have come forward including, but not limited to, Amarante’s, the Estate (on Townsend Avenue), and Anthony’s Ocean View, where Steph and her fiancée will hold their wedding ceremony on Saturday afternoon–near the water after all. “They have a place called Lily Beach,” Steph said. “And they very generously squeezed us in.” “It’s the spirit of yes,” Tanbee Smith said. “It’s what makes New Haven the greatest small city in America.”   The post A Year Of Planning, A Sudden Storm, A Search For A New Wedding Venue appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less