Jeffrey Bergen and The Wedding of Vaughn and Kayla

A few months ago, I got to witness and be part of one of the sweetest, most wholesome experiences of my life.  With less than a week’s notice, I was invited via WhatsApp to the wedding of my friends Vaughn and Kayla in NYC. Vaughn’s father Jeffrey was quite ill and said his one regret was that he wasn’t going to see them marry. Without hesitation, they scrambled into action and spontaneously planned a wedding.

Having just returned to Toronto after six months of travel, I decided it was wiser not to go. While out at 2:00 a.m. the night before the wedding, my friend Dave asked me “what will you regret more? Going or not going?” Thanks Dave.

On four hours sleep, I was able to collect my suit, see my folks and make my way to New York. With a backpack in hand, I showed up first to Vaughn’s apartment where I believed the wedding was to be. I hadn’t told them I was coming and so wasn’t getting updates. Thankfully his mother was still there and let me know the new address – what turned out to be the gorgeous apartment of Jeffrey’s friend Joshua. What was originally intended to be an intimate gathering in a small apartment ballooned into an overflowing celebration of love and life.

Kayla, glowing in her flowing dress, saw me first. Shocked, she gave me a hug and thought Vaughn had hid my plan to be there from her – until he came into the hall and had the same dropped jaw. It was a beautiful surprise and the best gift I could have given – or received.

Somehow within a week they had organized a proper wedding including a beautiful chuppah and more than 60 people in attendance, dozens more tuning in via Zoom.

That night was a moving story about love – not only Vaugh and Kayla’s love for each other, but their love for and desire to honour Jeffrey. Moreover the love of an entire community of people who knew and cherished this man and his family. If you don’t know them, the Bergens have been a cornerstone of art and goodness in New York City for nearly a century, having run ACA Galleries since the 1930’s, featuring black and gay artists before it was safe to, supporting important causes and vulnerable people,.

It’s a the three layer story of romantic love, familial love, and communal love, but there are another few layers that are perhaps more subtle.

On one hand, it shows what’s possible with respect to weddings, in stark contrast to the typical near year-long, arduous and expensive process. This was the most loving, charming wedding I’ve been to, planned in a week.

More important, where weddings often are about celebrating the love between the couple, this was an example of a couple using their love and the collective energy that their union generated to shower someone else – Jeffrey with love. Their wedding was a bold, difficult, all-encompassing act of fierce love for him.

A month after the wedding, Jeffrey passed away. I only met him briefly, but to have seen a big community of such beautiful people come together on short notice to help Kayla and Vaughn honour him, it shows that he must have been a mensch.

To be so loved and have made such a positive impact on your community – what a thing to aspire to.