Weddings
Franklin Pichardo, master cigar roller, sets up wherever you want him and rolls without stopping. Every guest goes home with a cigar made in front of them — and, if you add them, your two names on the band.
Your guests
Someone stops to watch him bunch a cigar, waves a friend over, and it builds from there without anybody organizing it. Guests who never light one stay anyway — what holds a room is watching the thing get made.
Your names on it
He rolls the cigar in front of your guest, so the band you choose is the only one it will ever wear — two names and a date, in gold. It is the last thing they read before they light it, and the first thing they look at when they find it in a jacket three weeks later.
It is the smallest thing he makes and the one people keep. A band is the first thing a smoker reads and the last thing they throw away — some of them come off in one piece and end up in the album, next to the photographs. You add the bands when you book, and every cigar of the night wears one.
See custom wedding cigar bandsFavors get left on the table with the empty glasses. A cigar goes into an inside pocket, and gets smoked in March, on somebody’s porch, with your names still on it.
Check your dateYour venue
Linen to the floor in a ballroom, a wooden bar in a barn. The boxes open along the back, the press and the blade laid out where people can see them, candles between. It is dressed for the room it is going into — which is the whole idea.
Your timeline
The table is up before the first guest walks in. It gives people who have never met something to stand around.
Speeches are done and half the room wants air. This is where most couples put him, and it is where the line gets long.
The ones still there at the end are the ones who will talk about it on Monday.
What your venue provides
Six feet is plenty. Everything that goes on it travels with him.
A terrace, a tent, a lawn — which is where your guests want to be by then anyway.
A tent or a doorway. The table needs shade, not sun.
Real weddings
Weddings he has worked, from a New York ballroom to a barn outside Boston — so you can picture it at yours.
The man behind the table
Last July he rolled at his own nephew’s wedding, and wrote afterwards: “When it’s family, everything is done with extra love, pride, and perfection.” Strangers who met him once keep using the same word about him, without being asked — family.
He learned his trade inside the Arturo Fuente factory in Santiago, and has spent more than twenty-five years bringing that table to other families’ celebrations.
Family. Guests who had known him for an hour keep reaching for it — the way yours will.
Franklin sat down with my wife and I and enjoyed a cigar with us. He treated us like family and gave us hugs on our way out. Papo is the real deal with a heart of gold and a sense of humor that can make anyone laugh.
This year’s couples
Each one opens with the photographs from that night. Picture your own guests in them.
A courtyard wedding, and the bride at the tableBlue Bell, PA · Aug 2026
A black-tie wedding, in a gardenJul 2026
A wedding and a lounge, the same nightNov 2025
A barn wedding outside BostonBoston, MA · Oct 2025
A ballroom wedding, New YorkNew York, NY · Sep 2025
A Saturday night weddingAug 2025
His nephew’s weddingJul 2025
An outdoor wedding, the table working till the endNov 2024
A wedding with its own cigar barOct 2024Before you book
Weddings get booked before anything else in the calendar. Ask about the date and you will know today.
Check your date