After the Lovings

Being a New York City based planning company, it's a regular and frequent thing for us to work on interracial and interfaith weddings. Indeed, it's probably a specialty of ours. So, I was very touched yesterday when I was watching my Oprah on TIVO to learn about the Lovings. The Lovings were a young interracial couple living in Virginia in the 1960's who fell in love and wanted to get married. Only, interracial marriage wasn't legal at the time in their state. They travelled to DC and eloped, only to be arrested upon their return and banned from Virginia for 25 years.

The Lovings- appropriately named, I must say- fought the case for interracial marriage all the way to the supreme court and in 1967 Loving vs. Virginia resulted in reversing laws prohibiting such relationships. Considering that in the years since, nearly 4 million interracial couples have wed, it's hard to imagine life before the Lovings. Having been a part, as planner or personally, of wonderful unions of culturally and racially different brides and grooms, I'm thankful to have been a part of life after the Lovings.