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September 2, 2007

Elephant trumpets couple’s big day at Green Meadows Farm

Ethan Forman

HAMILTON — One of the guests at Rahul Bhargava and Emily Rosenberg’s wedding scarfed down apples by the bushel, all decked out in bright red and orange.

Then she carried the groom on her back to meet his bride.

This several-ton member of the groom’s party at a Cambridge couple’s blended wedding was named Minnie, an Asian elephant provided by R.W. Commerford and Sons Traveling Petting Zoo of Goshen, Conn.

She was hired to play an integral part of the traditional Hindu wedding procession, or barat, at Green Meadows Farm on Asbury Street yesterday afternoon.

Minnie became the lumbering delight of wedding guests who paraded around her as she carried the Bhargava aloft at the start of his hybrid Hindu-Jewish wedding, held in a tent in fields of a certified organic farm.

Alex Rosenberg, the bride’s brother, said Bhargava was the third generation of his family to ride an elephant in a wedding procession.

Without an elephant, it is common for horses or cars to stand in.

“In the U.S., an elephant is hard to get,” said the groom’s brother, Rohit Bhargava of Washington, D.C., who said the custom signals the start of the wedding.

“A wedding is what brought the whole town together,” said Rohit Bhargava, who works for a marketing agency. As the procession wended its way through a town, guests would come from their homes and join in.

Minnie arrived in a large trailer and was prepped and dressed by Bill and Tim Commerford.

As guests arrived around 3 p.m., some girls wore brightly colored saris and boys wore dark kurtas, while some Jewish men sported yarmulkes.

“We are about to mount the elephant,” said the groom, talking into a walkie-talkie just before he climbed a ladder onto Minnie’s back. As he settled in, dozens in his wedding party, many snapping pictures, clapped and cheered.

It is customary to have a young male family member along for the ride, but after the groom climbed aboard, his 3-year-old nephew, Rohan Bhargava, balked.

Bhargava shrugged it off and swayed to the rhythm of the drum, or dhol, played by Rishi Bawa of Southborough, while Minnie’s handlers led her down a long driveway to the ceremony.

All the while, the groom snapped his fingers and clapped to the drums.

“I think it’s very cool they were able to find an elephant to do that part of the ceremony,” said friend Steve Schultze of Cambridge.

Farm manager Andrew Rodgers and his wife, Diana, brought their small children to see the elephant.

“They were pretty blown away. They were very excited,” Diana Rodgers said. “They said they can have elephant rides for the kids.”

Rodgers said the farm does not cater to many weddings, and while it does maintain livestock, chickens, pigs, sheep and llamas — to guard the sheep from coyotes — it has never had a pachyderm at a wedding.

It’s more common for Green Meadows to give hayrides with a tractor than elephant rides, she said.

“They have been a wonderful couple to work with,” said Rodgers, who added that when the couple booked their wedding at the farm, they took care of all the details, both great and small.

The elephant is another bit of lore for a farm run by Joanne Patton, widow of Maj. Gen. George Patton.

“I had to check with her and she was thrilled,” said Rodgers, who said Joanne Patton planned to watch the elephant walk the farm from her house.

“Crazy,” said Evelin Tamayo, an immigrant from Ecuador, who works at the farm. “I think this man has a lot of dreams to bring his culture to the United States.”

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