Animal Lovers’ Bash at the Zoo

Katherine Hazleton & Craig Nazzaro
The Bronx Zoo
October 17, 2009

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Katherine and Craig share their Union Square apartment with two cats, a dog, and a hedgehog. So when they got engaged (after dating for nine years) and Katherine’s mom suggested the Bronx Zoo, it made perfect sense. “In high school I even had a potbellied pig!” she recalls. The pair were the first to marry in the zoo’s ecofriendly Lion House, where guests drank hot chocolate and cider outside during a sea-lion demonstration before the vows. Georgia-born Katherine embellished the menu with her mom’s own recipes: pulled pork, macaroni and cheese, and biscuits. And no Southern bride’s wedding would be complete without a groom’s cake. “If a single gal eats the groom’s cake, she’ll have good luck,” says Katherine. “It’s like catching the bouquet,” Craig adds. At evening’s end, they headed to the Waldorf-Astoria—where Katherine’s grandmother spent her own wedding night—but not before a little photo-booth goofing with hand puppets they’d brought as props. “We wanted real animals,” Katherine recalls, “but the zoo wouldn’t allow it.”

As told to Thessaly La Force.