A first for the University of Utah and the Guardsman Tailgate lot. Our friends John & Lynne asked me to officiate their wedding well before this but hadn't picked a venue. They decided to, as they described it, "bring the wedding to the party instead of bringing the party to the wedding.
I didn't think the ceremony was that great but it had a lot of positive feedback. I hadn't had my neck surgery after the car accident and my legs weren't working all that great. That's why you can see me leaning on Porky's rail. Plus I had a shake in my left arm that wouldn't go away no matter what.
The estimate on the crowd was about 800 people along with three TV stations covering the event. Then the Fox coverage started to grow. Over the next couple of days I got messages that Elle Thomas's story on the wedding aired on Fox stations in Las Vegas, Flagstarr, Phoenix & Reno that we know of. It may have been more.
It was truly a memorable day.
John & Lynne's Wedding
This is Cris's video of probably the most widely seen wedding I've done. John & Lynne's tailgate wedding. The guess is that there were around 800 people in the audience. Channels 4, 5 & 13 were there that day covering it. Since Fox stations share content I suddenly got messages that Elle Thomas's coverage of the wedding had been rebroadcast on Fox Las Vegas, Fox Flagstaff, Fox Reno & Fox Phoenix. Maybe some others that I never heard about.
I remember that I was having trouble that day. I was about a year after my rear-ender and hadn't had surgery on my neck yet. That's why you can see me leaning on the rail of Portky the Pig Bus's back patio and I had a case of the shakes in my right hand. It still was a great day and something of a revival of officiating after a couple of years off.
One of the things I enjoy about officiating weddings is customizing the ceremony to the couple. This might be my favorite. The couple (who gave permission to post the video but asked that I not tag their names) was scheduled to get married in our backyard on the 25th.
Last Thursday they decided they'd had enough and showed up at the front door, Pie pizza and wine in hand and said, "we're eloping, will you marry us right here, right now? No ceremony, just the minimum we have to do to make it legal." So we called a couple of neighbors to be witnesses and voila, the shortest ceremony in my 8 years of officiating weddings. And the bride & groom didn't even have to put their wine down.