Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 14, 1994 TAG: 9403140059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Surprise No. 1: The cab didn't show up to take the bride to the Feb. 19 wedding. She had to hitch a ride in the back of a flower truck.
Surprise No. 2: A murder had just been committed near the renovated lighthouse they stayed at in Amelia Island, Fla., their first stop on a two-week honeymoon. They were routinely questioned by detectives.
Surprise No. 3: The lighthouse roof leaked.
Surprise No. 4: In the Florida Keys, they lost the safety shutoff key when their Jet-Ski overturned. Not really in danger, they floated about seven miles offshore until the rental agency came looking for them.
But it was on the drive home, when they stopped at a friend's house in Alabama, that they got the big one - Surprise No. 5.
They weren't legally hitched.
"I was kind of amused," the would-be groom said. "It seemed typical of the way things had been going. We'd had a good time running into these various adventures, and here was another one."
It seems the man who performed the Dudleys' would-be wedding, a family friend from Texas who is an ordained Episcopal priest, had failed to comply with Virginia law when he flew in for the ceremony.
Priests, ministers and rabbis from other states can be immediately licensed to perform marriages in Virginia if they bring their ordination papers in person to any Virginia circuit court. The Dudleys' priest didn't.
The couple, according to the would-be Mrs. Dudley, simply returned to Richmond "and then arranged to get married again."
The second wedding, with only close friends attending, took place March 10 in the chapel at Richmond Hill.
by CNB