Church Asked to Move Street Festival to Save Bride-to-Be’s Wedding Day

A usually workaday session of Community Board 8’s Street Fairs Committee turned into a powerful display of community spirit on June 30, with everybody seemingly working together to find a way to save a woman’s local wedding plans.

Kristin Toppeta told the committee that she had the unfortunate luck of planning much of her Sept. 20 wedding around having ease of access to East 66th Street, which a local church—The Parish of St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Catherine of Siena—has planned on closing that very same day for a fair.

“My parents reside at 158 E. 66th St. It’s the home I grew up in,” Toppeta told participants in the virtual meeting. “That morning, I have movers arriving at the house to pick up a large number of heavy decor items.

“There will also be morning catering delivery and a delivery from bouquets and boutonnières for the wedding,” she added. “Photographers and hair and make-up will be [arriving] in the morning, and in the afternoon a bus will be dropping off my fiancé and his parents.

“If there’s one day in the entire span of my entire life that I need this street to be open, it’s this day,” Toppeta continued. She humbly requested that the church either move its fair to East 65th Street, or reschedule the fair to another weekend.

If both of these were impossible, she said, she requested that they consider moving it to the west of her house. Tearing up, she noted that she was not making “this request lightly,” and that she appreciated how much work the church had done in preparing for the fair.

Father Peter Martyr Yungwirth, who was presenting on behalf of the church, chimed in to note that he had already “been in touch” with Toppeta. “When I first heard about this, I thought that Kristin could have 200 people cheering for her and her groom when they come out of her house,” he said.

Most important, however, Yungwirth said, he was “personally” open to moving the fair. Moving it to East 65th Street, he said, would “be a little more complicated, but not in a way that’s unreasonable.”

Barbara Rudder and Wilma Johnson, two co-chairs of the subcommittee, tried to see if such a compromise could be cemented. Moving the fair a block south “seems like a very simple change,” Rudder said, “and that would solve your problem, Kristin, wouldn’t it?”Jon Kraus, who works for CB8, spoke up to say he’d have to look into whether the application for the fair could be altered.

Eventually, Rudder and Johnson suggested moving the issue before Community Board 8’s entire body, during a full board meeting coming up on July 16. They invited the principals to return then, to determine whether things would work out for everybody.

As for the fair itself, Yungwirth said that it would include arts and crafts in the morning for youngsters, plus a bubble show. Tours of the parish church would be hosted as well, and salsa or swing dances would hopefully be hosted in the afternoon. Yet everybody, including Yungwirth, seemed focused on one thing: making sure that Toppeta could have the wedding of her dreams.