Other people's weddings

I started the year off with two marriage-related stories at work.

Couples ring in new year with wedding bands
Sunday, January 1, 2006
By Kati Phillips
Staff writer
Eva Beyer and John Camphouse announced their engagement on Independence Day.
So it was only fitting that the wedding date be on a holiday as well, New Year's Eve.
"We wanted to begin the new year as husband and wife and have an anniversary date that everybody can celebrate," Beyer said.
New Year's Eve weddings have become more popular and accepted in recent years, said Kathleen Murray, senior editor of The Knot, a leading wedding media and services company.
In the past, couples didn't want their guests to feel obligated to spend their holiday at a wedding. But as weddings became more elaborate and guest-centered, attitudes changed.
"A wedding is the perfect plan for New Year's," she said.
The holiday presented perfect symmetry for Kelly Wood, a spokeswoman for Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park.
She got engaged last Dec. 31 when her beau of seven years, Mike Cusack, got down on one knee at the Signature Room in the John Hancock Center.
They incorporated New Year's Eve into the ceremony and reception.
The wedding was held fashionably late at 8 p.m. in a Lakeview Catholic church with the reception afterward at a hotel near Navy Pier, the site of Chicago's huge New Year's Eve fireworks show.
The nearly 200 guests received mini champagne bottles as favors, and there was a midnight toast. It was an adult-only affair.
"Even my single friends are excited because they don't have to make plans," Wood said before the event.
Winter weddings have not displaced spring and summer ceremonies, though.
June, July and August consistently are the most popular months to apply for marriage licenses in Chicago and its suburbs.
In August 2005, 4,274 licenses were issued, according to figures provided by Cook County Clerk David Orr's office. The number plummeted to 2,300 in November. The licenses are good for 60 days.
But New Year's Eve was expected to be the busiest holiday of the year at marriage court, said a clerk spokeswoman. Three judges, instead of the regular two, wed couples from 9 a.m. until noon. The clerk's office is expecting about double the usual number of marriages, up to 200, because it's New Year's Eve.
The benefits of holding a New Year's Eve wedding are as prevalent as champagne bubbles, Murray said.
Certainly, such sparkling wine is a drink of choice at both fetes. And New Year's Day is a federal holiday, which gives guests time to recover.
Beyer and Camphouse selected New Year's Eve because it is a holiday they like to celebrate with friends and family.
They walked down the aisle of the Wayside Chapel in Palos Park with the six children they have between them. Since it was a second wedding for both, they opted for a luncheon at home with their loved ones.
Originally, Beyer thought the party would continue into the evening. But her fiancé surprised her with a reservation at a romantic spot in a Michigan resort town.
"We will bring in the new year just the two of us," she said last week.
Winter weddings are not guaranteed wonderlands, said Laura Dilallo, owner of Weddings by Design in Orland Park.
The ceremonies can be marred by unpredictable weather and predictably high costs.
Some sites request a premium price in lieu of throwing a traditional party with cover charge. Flowers are more expensive out of season. And subsequent anniversary reservations have to be made far in advance for prime dinner spots and hotels, which often jack up prices for New Year's Eve.
Dilallo, who is coordinating Bears player Charles Tillman's wedding, once turned down a New Year's gig.
"I said, 'You know what, I don't want to work on New Year's,' " she remembered.
Wayside Chapel in Palos Park is traditionally closed for the same reason, said wedding coordinator Bonnie Rusnak.
After a flurry of inquiries about this year, one reverend agreed to preside over services at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., but nothing later. No brides were enticed by the morning slot.
"I had brides say, 'I'd have to get up at 3 in the morning' to get ready," Rusnak said.
All things being equal, couples who wed on the last day of the year say they will never be without festivity and good cheer.
New Year's Eve means party time and is an easy date to remember, even for grooms like Wood's.
"He will be in trouble if he ever forgets an anniversary," she said.

Surprise!
Beverly man becomes first to marry in Cook County in 2006
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
By Kati Phillips
Staff writer
Joseph Clair became an accidental groom Tuesday when he stopped by the Cook County clerk's office on the way to work in downtown Chicago.
The Beverly man and his fiancee, Deborah Steimel, wanted to pick up a marriage license so they could hold a civil ceremony in the coming weeks.
The couple wanted to be legally married before moving in together. A graduate of Marist High School and University of Notre Dame, Clair said they have a church ceremony planned for October.
But Clair and Steimel were the first marriage license applicants to walk through the doors in 2006, which afforded them the chance to be married on the spot with Cook County Clerk David Orr presiding.
"It was a little more than surprising, it was overwhelming," Clair said Tuesday afternoon. "We've been looking back smiling all day."
Orr is the only county clerk in Illinois with the authority to perform marriages. He asked a judge to waive the standard 24-hour waiting period so he could conduct the ceremony this morning.
To reward the newlyweds for taking the plunge, the clerk's office paid their $30 license fee and provided donated gift certificates redeemable for a weekend hotel stay at the Palmer House Hilton, dinner at Petterino's, and a pair of tickets to a show at the Goodman Theatre.
The tickets couldn't be more appropriate for the couple, who both performed in college theater productions.
Clair, 35, and Steimel, 25, who formerly worked together at Primera Engineers, first got to talking two years ago after sitting next to each other at a performance of "Pirates of Penzance."
The next night they saw a performance of "Hairspray" together and stayed up drinking coffee and talking late into the night.
Clair and Steimel, formerly of Kansas, started talking about marriage last New Year's Eve on the way to a friend's party and made it official mid-year. It is the second marriage for Clair, a father of three.
After the impromptu ceremony, Steimel called her boss and got the day off. Clair briefly went to work at Chicago Public Schools.
"They told me to get the heck out of there and enjoy my first day," he said.
So, the newlyweds grabbed some fast food, took the Rock Island District line back to Beverly and taped the noon news so they could show the ceremony to Clair's children. The kids' reaction: "Why didn't you get us out of school so we could be on TV, too?"
The experience — and the media exposure — was something the couple will never forget.
But the first is not something they are in a hurry to repeat, say, in 2007.
"We'll never have the first baby" of the year, he said.