February 3 - February 5, 2011: My friend’s wedding

I will be in NYC for about a week. My friend Piraye is getting married. It's a beautiful story, actually. Piraye is a gorgeous Turkish girl raised in an all-around academic family in Texas (both her parents are teaching professors) and a brilliant scientist.

A little bit over a year ago, she was staying on my couch for a couple of weeks when she had just returned from doing her post-doc in Cambridge. At that time, she had just quit academia to pursue a new business-woman career, and together with a friend created Celmatix, a biotechnology company specializing in fertility treatment for women. We had long and detailed conversations of how the company should be organized and grow, what committees they had to pass to gain respect in the industry, what networking they had to do in order to receive appropriate funding. We talked about my desire to quit my job and joked about me becoming the COO of Celmatix when it grows to be a multi-million dollar huge corporation and needs an efficient infrastructure. As a matter of fact, I was the first investor in the company, putting a very modest amount into their website development. I didn't understand a thing from what she was trying to explain to me about the new models of diagnosing infertility; I just believed in Piraye.

One day last year, at a dinner party with friends, she met Nick, who is a venture capitalist. Naturally, Piraye was very much interested in talking to him about how the process of attracting capital works. Nick was also very much interested in talking to her – as I have mentioned, Piraye is a gorgeous and brilliant woman. And thus their personal joint venture began.

And this weekend, I'm here for their wedding. Really, life is so amazingly full of possibilities!

Piraye and Nick's wedding

The wedding took place in the NYC Public Library. Need I say anything more? Well, I will. It was the most chic wedding I have ever been to. Everything from the vows to the place settings was the epitome of tastefulness and simplicity. The words said out loud were very sweet (yet not cheesy). The toasts proclaimed were full of humor (yet not "roasty"). The looks exchanged between them were full of adoration. In other words – forgive me this cliché – the atmosphere was charged with love and joy, and I felt truly happy to be part of it… And on top of everything, we had a lot of fun!