New Archive:

October 2000 Issue

The Today Show Ties The Jewish Knot

By Jodi Werner
Photos/Cover Image by Marc S. Fried

When 27 year-old Melanie Nelson dreamed, as a young girl, of her wedding, she never imagined that over 130,000 people would help her plan it.

But when The Today Show selected her and fiance Peter Ginsberg, 28, to be their "Today Ties the Knot couple"--a privilege that included an all-expense paid wedding along with a public voting via the internet on most wedding-related decisions--that's exactly what happened.

Bright and early on September 6th, Rabbi Moshe Birnbaum conducted a traditional Jewish ceremony in front of the Today Show staff, Melanie and Peter's friends and family, and a national audience.

On October 2nd the couple will return to The Today Show where they will air a segment from the home video they made during their honeymoon in Hawaii.

The Today Show had several surprises lined up for the honeymooning couple: massages; Carl, the bath butler, to draw them a bath of milk whey protein, scatter orchards, heat up the towel warmer, and pour the champagne; and room service consisting of filet mignon, maji maji, and an edible chocolate box filled with truffles.

"We were given royal treatment all the way through," Peter said in a phone interview. "We were extremely overjoyed. It went far past our expectations. It was just an amazing experience."

More than amazing, it appears to have been a miracle as well.

Four days after Peter proposed to Melanie in January, Peter's father, Jerry, was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Three months later, he died, leaving the Ginsberg and Nelson families too grief stricken to plan a wedding. But Peter's mother Carol (whom friends call Kerre) insisted that the wedding go on because it would have been what Jerry wanted.

Peter and Melanie's initial attempts to make preparations only led to frustration. Then Peter watched The Today Show and saw co-anchors Matt Lauer and Katie Couric advertising the "Today Ties the Knot" contest. He decided to enter on a whim.

"There's no chance we'll win," he told Melanie.

Although a thousand couples entered the contest during a two-week period in May, only four couples were invited to appear on The Today Show to tell the stories of how they met. Peter and Melanie were one of those couples.

Viewers were encouraged to log on to www.today.msnbc.com and vote for their favorite couple. Over 130,000 viewers logged on, and the majority said that if they were going to help make a couple's wedding decisions, they wanted that couple to be Peter and Melanie.

Each week for the following 12 weeks, TheKnot.com editor-in-chief Carley Roney walked online readers through a step-by-step process for planning a wedding, and readers were given the opportunity to vote on the invitations, food, flowers, bedroom wear, honeymoon location, even the rings for Peter and Melanie's wedding.

Peter made his most courageous move during college, when he decided to give a ring he found on the cafeteria floor to a girl he had never met before. Approaching his fraternity friends, he sat across from Melanie and gave her the ring, telling her not to "take it off unless you meet someone worthy to give it to.' I was hoping she'd say, 'Oh, that's so sweet. Let's go out.' But, she didn't."

One year later, while Melanie was training for field hockey, she twisted her ankle and fell right in front of Peter's fraternity house. She knocked on the front door with tears in her eyes, and Peter answered the door.

After putting a frozen loaf of bread on her ankle, (it was a fraternity house--they had no ice), he threw her on his back and took her to the emergency room. During the several-hour wait for medical attention, the two talked and fell in love.

"While on the gurney, I realized that I still had the ring on that he gave me a year ago," Melanie said.

Although the wedding has received a lot of media attention, some people think televising a wedding live is taking reality-based programming one step too far.

"But this was really my day. Melanie's day. That's what made it special," Peter said. "While everyone was involved, it was just Melanie and me up there exchanging vows. If it were any way other than that, it just wouldn't have been the same."

The wedding's authenticity was buoyed by Rabbi Birnbaum's participation. Birnbaum is the rabbi at Plainview Jewish Center in Long Island, where Jerry Ginsberg was past president and the Ginsberg family, (Peter and Melanie included), are members.

"I really wanted to convey in my voice how I feel about the prayers, and what the prayers mean to us," Birnbaum said.

Birnbaum became close with Peter and Melanie while the Ginsberg family was mourning the loss of Peter's father, and through Melanie's conversion to Judaism. Melanie, who minored in religion at William Smith College, was interested in Judaism before she even met Peter.

In the dressing room before the wedding, Rabbi Birnbaum prayed for three things: "That I'd be a worthy medium of the message of Judaism, that I should concentrate on the bride and groom and bless them in such a way as to give really good semblance of their marriage, and that this would succeed in terms of it being understandable to Jews and people unfamiliar with Judaism."

It looks like Birnbaum's prayers were answered.

"I feel proud that I think that people who have never been exposed to a Jewish wedding, to Jewish culture, were amazed at how beautiful the custom is," Peter said. "The exposure that the Jewish tradition was given was fantastic."

Melanie believes this exposure reached the heavens as well.

"In our hearts, we thought, '[Peter's father is] doing this for us. He's up there with God and making this happen for us," she said.

And in the end, Melanie and Peter got their dream wedding.

"I love this woman," Peter said, of Melanie. "I've loved her for a long time. I happened to marry someone who I think is the perfect woman."

When Jodi Werner isn't editing a really cool webzine, she's either finishing up a Master's in Fine Arts in Creative Writing, using Feng Shui to fix the ch'i in the guas of her apartment, or trying to cook more often with herbs and spices.

.