By Susan Bard Hall
When my wedding reception discussion turned to cake toppers, I looked in a wedding accessory store and found a bride and groom cat porcelain figurine. Even the cats’ gray color looked like my husband-to-be’s blue smoke Persian.
Kaye Paletz of Pennsylvania and her husband shared their union with seven feline friends (she had three cats, he had four), so it was natural that their wedding reception was feline-themed. For her wedding cake topper, Paletz located a music box complete with cats in bridal attire and wedding march music. At the couple’s sit-down brunch, guests found their seats by matching the cat picture on their place card with the color cat photo in the center of each table.
“If you can dream it, we can make it happen,” Allyson Ludewig, director of catering at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, says about involving cats in their owner’s wedding.
If the couple wants their pet’s presence felt without the pet actually being there, they could provide a video, and the hotel will set up a VCR and monitor. For those who want their cat to attend but are concerned about disrupting the animal’s daily routine, the pet-friendly hotel would welcome the cat. Whenever guests check in with their pets, a pet amenity consisting of food and water dish, bottled water, toys and treats is sent to the room.
A couple may prefer to go with a few feline accents rather than an entirely feline-themed wedding, Carrie Kaye of Kaye Productions in Skokie, Illinois, says. Wedding invitation books include cat designs, she says, and wedding cakes and place cards can be cat-shaped. Kaye suggests using cat bowls to serve nuts and candies and giving out cat picture frames as tokens for guests.
