This article appeared in the May 23, 2012 Jewish Advocate.

Captions:

Dan Marshall and Shira Michal Price in Boca Rotan. They will never forget their flight home.

‘We sang Sinatra to each other while walking down the street, then kissed and sang some more.’ - Shira Price on her first date with Dan Marshall

First vows, then bows:

A marriage made in heaven – and on the dance floor

Dan Yonah Ben-Dror Marshall – actor, dancer, singer, producer, impresario – is getting ready for the show of his life: his own wedding. And as might be expected from the director of Brookline Community Center for the Arts and the catalyst behind many other entertainment ventures, the nuptials will be no simple one-day affair.

The wedding itself is Sept. 9 in New Jersey, but the festivities have already begun. They will span 6,000 miles, from pre-wedding parties in New Jersey and Boston to a honeymoon in Europe and Israel. The couple will then settle in Brookline.

Just last October, Marshall was resigning himself to never finding his beshert. “I complained to my mother, Esther, that to be happy at the age of 37, I should be happy with what I already have, even if I never get married,” he said.

Just one week later, Marshall’s luck would change. And, though they had never met before, he and his beshert had been waltzing around each other for years before a quirk of fate finally brought them together on the same dance floor.

Marshall had been booked to perform at a Halloween dance on Oct. 29 in New Hampshire, but then last fall’s only snowstorm clogged the roads north. At the last minute, he decided to attend the wedding of a family friend, Dr. Isaac Pourati, at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers.

Shira Michal Price – who had come up from her home in Kingston, N.J., to see her cousin married – was at a table chatting with other guests when Marshall stopped by. “He asked if anyone wanted to dance. I love to dance, and it’s only fitting that the song playing was ‘Moondance,’” Price said.

“Within the brief hour and a half I spent at the wedding, I danced with some parents, but only with one woman close to my age, who was Shira,” Marshall said. “I gave her my card, learned that she was on Facebook, and promptly headed out to a Halloween party I attend every year.”

Earlier, during the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom had gathered all the single men and women under the chuppah. “Shira and I were there, and little did I know that magic was in the air,” said Marshall.

After his abrupt departure, Price said, “I wondered if anything would come of it. I didn’t have to wait too long.”

Parallel lives

Marshall had been scheduled for a film job in New Jersey a week later. It was just 45 minutes from Princeton, where his sister was studying for her doctorate. “Lo and behold, Kingston is next to Princeton,” he noticed, and so he made a date with Price. The two discovered many parallels in their lives, including childhoods in Israel. From the age of 2 to 7, Price had lived in French Hill, the same Jerusalem neighborhood as Marshall’s family. The two attended the same kindergarten, grade school and synagogue, where Price’s father was the rabbi. “Amazingly, we never met,” she said, but then she was four years younger.

Her family moved to Canada, New York and finally to New Jersey. Marshall, who was born in Jerusalem in 1974, moved to Brookline in 1989. He has lived there ever since, except for attending UMass-Amherst for engineering and dance in the mid-’90s.

The couple once again nearly crossed paths about a decade ago. Price lived in Cambridge from 2000 to 2005, working for a time at a jewelry store in the Arcade building in Coolidge Corner – just around the corner from an arts center Marshall ran.

Like Marshall, Price also had a broad background in the performing arts. She had acted in shows and musicals in childhood and college, and studied at the London Academy of Theatre. She sang soprano, studied belly dance and loved to go out dancing, be it Latin, swing or freestyle.

But while she was in Massachusetts, Price was studying to be a teacher, earning a master’s at Brandeis. After working at several area religious schools, she decided to change careers, moving back to New Jersey to pursue her passions in acting and gemology. Ultimately, she became a gemologist.

On that first date, Marshall and Price did much more than talk. A band was playing, Price said, and “Dan managed to get everyone dancing.” Afterward, she said, “We sang Sinatra to each other while walking down the street, then kissed and sang some more. Dan said he knew that he was going to marry me right then.”

Price brought some family photos to their second date. “When I saw her mom’s photo, I immediately recognized her image and had the name Debbie in my head,” Marshall said. “Shira’s mom’s name is Deborah, and she most likely taught me at my synagogue’s childhood enrichment program.”

Over the next couple of months, the couple got to know each other’s families as they traveled up and down the East Coast for weddings and other gatherings.

Midnight question

Flying back from a New Year’s wedding in Boca Raton, Fla., they weren’t able to book seats together. Marshall fixed that by asking other passengers to switch seats. “Around midnight, with a final realization and sureness and with tears running down my cheeks, I turned to Shira and proposed marriage,” he said. “My proposal was an open-ended one: ‘I’d like you to marry me, but I know it’s only been a month or so, so take all the time you need and when you’re ready, choose an engagement ring. … Time is my gift to you. ... I know what I want, and you are it.”

The two soon were planning that ring, which will include a pear-shaped diamond that had been on Price’s grandmother’s ring. As soon as they got off the plane, Marshall called Price’s mother and father and asked for their permission. He also asked his own parents. All consented.

He secretly bought a pre-engagement necklace at the store where Price works. “My fancy was captured by a beautiful and elegant necklace with 12 small sapphires, arranged like the Choshen Stones on the breastplate of the Cohen Gadol, signifying the 12 Tribes of Israel,” he said.

Marshall attended Price’s family Passover seders in New Jersey, where they sang the same melodies that they had learned as children at the synagogue in French Hill in Jerusalem.

“We both value being part of a Jewish community and sharing our milestones and holidays together,” Price said.

‘Cheek to cheek’

The six-hour wedding will include Ashkenazi and Sephardic rituals, and entertainment ranging from reggae to Israeli to Broadway. Rabbi Ronald D. Price, the bride’s father, will officiate, and the couple’s wide circle of friends and family will provide everything from entertainment to photography to the wedding gown.

Later, entertainment will include a five-piece Latin/jazz/reggae/classics band, a strolling magician and possibly, an Israeli/Sephardic singer duo.

Kim Pham of Kim’s Fashion Design of Copley Mall,　who is a friend and colleague of Marshall,　is creating a gown　of pink satin covered by layers of sheer　white chiffon fabric with elegant patterns of lace taken from the dress that Price’s mother wore at her wedding. The bodice will feature a sweetheart neckline and cap sleeves. With its Aline style, the gown will flow elegantly when Price dances.

And that dancing will be a show in itself. After the wedding feast, the couple plan to dance and sing “Cheek to Cheek,” just as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers performed it in the movie “Top Hat.’” The bridal couple themselves will be entertained with a wedding shtick, an Orthodox tradition in which guests dance, sing, juggle and just act silly.

In preparation for the wedding, some of the male guests are practicing a special Hasidic dance that they will perform around the chuppah after Marshall breaks the wine glass. Later, entertainment will include a five-piece Latin/jazz/reggae/ classics band, a strolling magician and possible and an Israeli/Sephardic singer duo. “Our general wedding plan and philosophy is that the artists who will play a part in the wedding will all be close friends of ours,” Marshall said. “All of us will take a break and sit together for dinner as one big family.”

Marshall hopes the family will include some of his adopted grandparents from “You & Broadway,” the open mic and sing-along series he organizes for Brookline seniors.

Between the N.J. wedding, the overseas honeymoon, and the wedding party in Israel, the couple will celebrate seven nights of traditional festive dinners. They will end in Brookline with a Shabbos meal hosted by Rabbi Shayke Lerner and his wife, Chani, of the Chabad of Brookline, where Marshall attends and occasionally performs cantorial duties. In another example of fate’s role in this story, Marshall recalled that last Simchas Torah “Rabbi Lerner gave me a blessing that I should be the next one to get married.”

Nine days later, Marshall asked Price to take a spin around the Park Plaza dance floor.