The rainbow colors of Gay Pride Week will shine through the stained glass windows of a pop-up chapel on the top of the Wythe Hotel this week.
The hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is borrowing Brooklyn artist Tom Fruin’s sculptured house “Maxikiosco” and setting it on the rooftop terrace of the restaurant The Ides. Fruin also designed the the colorful sign for the hotel.
Gay couples wanting to get married can book the chapel from June 27-29th. The hotel will provide a secular or religious service, champagne, cake, and portrait photo of the wedding party. The chapel area can hold up to twenty guests, and the restaurant The Ides several hundred. The couple needs a marriage license and two witnesses (though the hotel can provide them). Artist Shantell Martin will be officiating at the weddings, though the couple may provide their own officiant.
To book the chapel call 347-390-0947 or email events@wythehotel.com
Fruin, who is a friend of the hotel’s founders, Peter Lawrence and Andrew Tarlaw, has produced other stained-glass structures. His “Watertower,” lite up by sunlight during the day and a light show by night was a spectacular colorful beacon set on top of Dumbo warehouse at 20 Jay Street in 2012.
Religious participation in 2014 Gay Pride Parade
In addition to the chapel Gay Pride Week includes other religious activities, including about two dozen religious groups marching in the parade on Sunday:
Affirmation and Mormons for Equality
African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change
American Jewish World Service
AXIOS Eastern Orthodox LGBT Christians
Bailey House
Celebration Spiritual Center
Church of St. Francis Xavier
Collegiate Churches of New York
Congregation Beit Simchat Torah
The Episcopal Church
From Queer to Eternity
God’s Love We Deliver
Good Shepherd Services
Grace Church of Brooklyn Heights
LGBT Catholics and Friends
Madison Avenue Baptist Church
Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship
Methodists in New Directions
Metropolitan Community Church of New York
New York Insight Meditation Center
Park Avenue Christian Church
Quakers of NYC (The Religious Society of Friends, NYQM)
Realization Center
Seventh-day Adventist Kinship International
St. Clement’s Episcopal Church
Note: the Catholic League has filed an application to participate in the parade with a banner “Straight is Great.” The parade organizers said that they would welcome the participation of the Catholic League, but Bill Donohue of the League says that he objects to being forced to attend “gay training sessions, or what they call ‘information’ sessions.” The tempest is part of the ongoing controversy over whether pro-Gay advocacy groups can participate in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Donohue’s group decided to test the willingness of Heritage of Pride/NYC Pride to admit anti-gay groups into the Gay Pride Week parade. David Studinski, director of NYC Pride, said in a press release, “Mr. Donohue and his group are free to participate in the 2014 March….Straight is great – as long as there’s no hate.” The gay group sent instructions to Donohue on how register.
