- Nita Lake Lodge
- Winter
- 48
Margaux and Daniel met on a chairlift, which they asked us not to mention. What they wanted was a winter wedding that did not look like a ski trip: no plaid, no antlers, nothing that could be sold in the village. We agreed to those terms in the first meeting.
In February the sun leaves the valley floor at 3:52. There is a stretch of roughly eleven minutes afterwards when the snow turns the colour of the inside of a shell. We placed the ceremony there, on the lakeshore below the lodge, with the guests standing. Forty-eight people in wool coats, no chairs, a string trio playing Pärt from the boathouse steps. It lasted fourteen minutes.
Inside, the dining room at Nita Lake Lodge was stripped of everything the lodge could spare. One table, thirty-one feet, in unbleached linen. Two hundred and eight taper candles in brass, unscented, replaced once between courses by a team of three who were never seen. Cedar, white ranunculus, and hellebore in low brass vessels. The room smelled of wax and woodsmoke and nothing else.
Dinner was six courses from the lodge kitchen with a fish course of Haida Gwaii sablefish that Daniel still speaks about. There were two speeches, both under four minutes, because we had asked. After dinner the doors to the terrace were opened and the guests went out into the snow with hot cider and stayed longer than any of us expected.
The gondola was chartered for a morning-after breakfast at the top of Whistler at 8 a.m. The sky was clear. It was the only part of the weekend we could not plan.
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