Wedding. The word prompts automatic responses: the beautiful bride gliding down the aisle; Prince Charming standing tall by the altar; a limo waiting to transport the newlyweds to a honeymoon hideaway. Very romantic. At least the bridal magazines say so. But some couples prefer to write their own romantic script.
Beautiful bride? Yes. But are those weight machines lining the aisle?
Prince Charming? Probably. But who can tell, because he is descending from the sky instead of standing staunchly up front.
Waiting limos? Not exactly. Try pontoons or a one-horsepower engine called Chelsea.
Unusual? Maybe to some people. But not to the following couples whose hearts follow their interests-and having had a little time to reflect on their choices, there`s not one regret.
Karen and Frank Untermeyer assumed their 90 wedding guests didn`t suffer from seasickness. They tied the knot seaman-style on a six-acre island on Countryside Lake in Mundelein. Guests, food, tent and dance floor were transported by three pontoon boats, an antique mahogany canoe and a motorboat. ”No one got seasick. But when we went over for the dress rehearsal the day before, one of the boats started to sink from the weight it was carrying,” Karen said.
Getting married on the island, which his parents own, was special but not an unusual choice for the Untermeyers.
”I grew up on 11 acres in Riverwoods, and my mother was one of the founders of the Lake County Forest Preserve District,” Frank said.
”It represented how we lead our lives. We`re very outdoors-type people. We try to preserve the land. We enjoy canoeing. And we spend a lot of time on the island,” Karen said.
”And I liked the idea of physically leaving the land for the ceremony,” Frank said.
So did the guests. ”It was great. The only way across was by boat. It was very private,” said Karen`s longtime friend Jody Marince. ”It was so unusual, having a wedding on an island I didn`t even know existed. You felt so far away, yet you were still in the Chicago area.”
Unusual, yes, but Marince thought the idea was totally in character: ”It reflected their personalities. They are very much into nature, yet it had a lot of elegance.”
Fortunately the weather held. More than three years after that mid-May wedding, Karen turns dreamy, picturing the wedding set against a backdrop of water, sky and trees: ”It was beautiful, peaceful. You could look out over the water during the ceremony. When we left, the guests were still on the island. We left waving goodbye as the sun was setting.”
”It was just gorgeous,” Frank said. ”It was magical.”
Glitz and a big guest list were not for Maureen and Ron Pestine of Northbrook. ”I went that route the first time,” said Maureen, 38. So did Ron, 45.
To the Pestines, a romantic wedding meant returning to the place where they met and courted. So what if they met on adjoining Stairmasters at Bally`s Chicago Health Club in Deerfield?
Maureen recalls Ron deliberately coming over to the equipment next to hers and starting a conversation. Ron`s memory is slightly different:
”Maureen started talking.”
Memories may play tricks in five years, but what they know for sure is that 2 1/2 years after they met, the Deerfield health club seemed the appropriate place to merge their interests in fitness. ”Maureen thought of it. She thought it might be neat,” Ron said. And the idea appealed to him.
”It added foundation to our relationship. The health club was a bond.”
”We wanted our wedding to be casual, fun. Not stuffy,” Maureen said. She added, ”We thought it was great. It was informal. We had about 30 close friends.”
They may not have had many guests. But they sure had spectators. The Pestines married at 6 p.m. during the week in a corner near the weight machines. ”It was prime time,” Maureen said.
The Pestines` friends took the place in stride. The only question was what was de rigueur at a health club wedding. ”Friends called to ask what to wear. They wondered if leotards were in order,” Maureen said. The answer was suit and dress are fine. The bride opted for a 1920s-styled off-white silk cocktail dress and hat.
”I wasn`t surprised that it wasn`t traditional. That would not be Maureen,” said Linda Ruber, a friend of Maureen`s since junior high. ”But it was nice. It was in an alcove.”
The only drawback Ruber noticed was the noise: ”Sometimes we couldn`t hear. People were working on the weight machines, but when they realized what was going on, they stopped and watched.”
With a tip of the hat to tradition, the Pestines toasted with champagne. But then the wedding party headed to a nearby Mexican restaurant. ”It still was casual and fun,” Maureen said.
And unlike some church weddings, where people may never return to their place of marriage, the Pestines return constantly.
Estimating that he and Maureen go to the club about five times a week, although not always together, Ron said, ”It`s still a very big part of our lives.”
The Pestine wedding definitely dispensed with typical formality. But guests knew where the groom was. It was just the opposite at the formal, 400- guest wedding of Pamela and Glenn Bockwinkle.
Guests usually look back to watch the bride make her entrance because the groom is where he belongs, up front. But at the Bockwinkle affair, all eyes turned up. Glenn had spent his weekends skydiving since 1976. And the July 1987 weekend when he and Pamela got hitched was no exception.
”Glenn had been a bachelor a long time. And the only way he was going to get married was by doing what he enjoys,” said the previously married Pamela. ”I was not kidding about having to skydive in. I said I`ll marry you, but I`m skydiving,” Glenn said.
Five years later the wedding is still the lead topic when Pamela and Glenn, who are in the automotive business, get together with auto dealers.
”We still hear, `Here is this crazy guy who jumped into his wedding.`
Most of the guests hadn`t seen skydiving before,” Glenn said.
”Yes, we still talk about it,” said dealer and close friend Lou Troy.
”It was exciting. Glenn had that James Bond look: unzipping the jumpsuit and stepping out in his tux.”
Troy guessed it might happen from hints Glenn dropped. ”But to actually see it happen, that was something,” Troy said. ”Here comes this yahoo jumping out of a plane. It really was different. Normally at weddings you see people coming down the aisle.”
Pamela, who had made three jumps before the wedding, begged out of the aerial entrance. Jumping in a formal wedding dress was a bit different than in a slim tux.
”It had too much fabric,” she said, but she admitted that perhaps that was just an excuse. Pamela prefers taking the pictures of the jumps.
Glenn`s choice of entrance influenced their choice of wedding sites.
”The prerequisite, I told her, was that there had to be room to jump in,”
he said. They chose the 200-acre Lake Forest Academy.
”It`s absolutely gorgeous,” Pamela said. They had fallen in love with the place when they attended a wedding there.
Once the estate of meat magnate J. Ogden Armour, the academy offered space to land, romantic gardens and a lake as a ceremony backdrop, and elegant marble interiors to host the dinner. Pamela thought it the perfect place for Glenn`s special entrance and formal affair.
”It was Glenn`s first marriage. He felt he needed a formal wedding for his side of family,” Pamela said.
What did she think of her husband-to-be`s entrance? Now that it`s history, Pamela said, ”It was neat, exciting.”
Glenn and jumping buddy Phil Schultz originally planned to land in the garden, which faced the chairs. ”We decided not to. We thought it might be a little too exciting,” Glenn said.
And he wanted to be near his car where harnesses and gym shoes could be exchanged for jackets and shiny leather. Glenn might be unusual, but after all, this was a formal wedding.
”It was a tiptoe landing,” Pamela said. Nevertheless, Glenn`s father, Gerald, who had recently suffered a heart attack, did not know about the jump. ”The first he knew about the plans was when he saw the plane overhead,”
Pamela said.
Glenn still skydives, making about 150 to 200 jumps a year. And Pamela?
”I probably will one of these days, if I`m caught at just the right moment,” she said. But until then Pamela plans to do her sharing of Glenn`s interest by continuing to record the jumps on film. ”I always go. I do all the photography. Jumping is a big part of our life,” she said.
Glenn tied his interest to his entrance. Gerrit and Ghislaine de Koning found the perfect exit.
Gerrit de Koning had no intention of marrying a second time. Painting and decorating were his livelihood. But horses and carriages were his big love. They were part of his life in Holland, where his father and grandfather raised horses and cattle. They were among his first purchases when he came to the U.S. in 1962. And in Lake Forest, where he lived, Gerrit driving a carriage around town became a familiar sight.
In 1981, Gerrit was 40, divorced and happy to be single. He didn`t expect to find someone who would understand the hours he spent with horses or who would be willing to help with barn chores.
Gerrit, however, reckoned he`d never meet anyone like 23-year-old Ghislaine Weiler. ”I literally grew up with horses. When I was 12, my horse, Martini, was 12,” said Ghislaine, who became a de Koning in 1985. ”Horses go way back in my family. My grandfather and great-grandfather were blacksmiths in France.”
It was only natural that horses brought them together. ”Gerrit was training horses to drive a wagon for a neighbor. I came home from a horse show and found my dad was in a wagon with Gerrit. They asked if I wanted to go for a drive,” Ghislaine said.
That was in 1981. ”It took him four years to propose,” she said.
”I never thought I was going to get married again. Never. Unless I married someone this time who liked horses,” Gerrit said.
So, of course, it was Gerrit`s 100-year-old Phaeton carriage and Chelsea, a former trotter Standardbred, and not the standard getaway car, that drew up to the church.
”It was the only way we would get married,” Ghislaine said.
The wedding ceremony at St. James Lutheran Church in Lake Forest was fine. But what Gerrit remembers is his beautiful Ghislaine looking like a Victorian heroine in the horse and carriage. In the drive after the ceremony, they traveled from the church to Market Square, then up Illinois Highway 60 to Ghislaine`s parents` home in Mettawa. ”People honked and waved. They know me in Lake Forest,” Gerrit said.
Has their interest in horses waned in the past seven years?
”The first thing I do when I get home (from work) is head for the barn,” Ghislaine said. ”It`s a big part of our lives. We split the chores. We`re always in the barn, working with horses.”
At latest count they have four horses and about 10 goats. Martini is gone, and Chelsea has been sold. But Ghislaine has Osh, an American quarter horse, and Gerrit has Ishnalla, a young pinto he is training to pull carriages. Two American paints, Mr. Spurs and Bandit, are currently doing carriage duty.
And there is plenty to pull. Try 20 carts, wagons, carriages and sleighs. But they have the room. Gerrit moved from Lake Forest to a farm on Waukegan`s northern outskirts when they married.
And, yes, Gerrit will drive other wedding couples in his carriages. Horses are an expensive hobby. ”This way it pays for itself,” he said.
Different strokes are okay for different folks, but sometimes the difference is unplanned.
Steven and Janet Sanborn of Zion did not plan a hospital wedding. They had booked a restaurant in Libertyville for Labor Day weekend 1992. But place and time weren`t as important to Janet as Steven`s peace of mind. Steven`s mom, Mary, an oncology patient at Lake Forest Hospital who had been in remission, went back into the hospital in May.
”He was so unhappy about the situation. I wanted to make it nicer for him. We were walking out on the patio at the hospital. It was gorgeous. I thought, Why not have it here,” Janet said after the wedding.
Hospital officials were delighted to set everything in motion for a happy occasion. ”We were all excited about it,” said hospital spokeswoman Cheryl Corriveau.
Calls went out to the nurses who would be on duty, the dietary director, the coffee shop and the environment and grounds department.
”Everybody really pitched in. Everybody recognized this was an unusual situation,” said Leah Nordmark, vice president for nursing.
With a string quartet in the background and Mom plus 40 guests watching, Steven and Janet exchanged vows at Lake Forest Hospital on May 23. Bad weather forced the ceremony inside. But then, place was not what counted. ”It really meant a lot to me to have my mom at our wedding,” Steven said.
At last check Mary Sanborn was back home with hospice nursing care.
”Everyone at the hospital was great,” Steven said.
