Alumni share their stories of getting married on campus.
When Amy Smithwick Boyle, W’92, and Rob Boyle, R’92, retrace their first steps as husband and wife, they hear the pitter-patter of little feet.
What better place to celebrate your anniversary than on the campus where you met and were married? That’s what Amy Smithwick Boyle, W’92, and her husband, Rob Boyle, R’92, discovered as they walked back down the aisle of the chapel on their first anniversary.
They were married in the chapel on Aug. 3, 1996. Every year since, they have retraced those first steps as husband and wife.
The Boyles are among more than 1,000 alumni couples who have tied the knot on campus over the years. Many of them fell in love while they were students. They kissed in the gazebo and returned there to get engaged. They share a special bond to the University, a strong connection that pulls them back to campus for frequent visits.
“During our first anniversary, we happened to be in Richmond,” Amy recalls. “We had gone to pick up the top of our wedding cake, and we decided to go to campus. The door to the chapel was open, so we walked down the aisle and talked about our wedding day. It was a happy accident that became a tradition.”
In recent years, their twin sons have accompanied them on their anniversary and walked down the aisle with them. Their infant daughter will be part of the tradition this summer.
“This year, because they had been in a wedding, the twins said, ‘I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Boyle’ when we were standing at the altar. We walked down the aisle and they followed us. It wouldn’t be our anniversary without this tradition.”
Married by Burhans
Dr. David Burhans estimates that he has united more than 600 alumni couples in holy matrimony since becoming the University’s first chaplain in 1974. He retired from the position in 2004, but he continues to work part time for the University, and he continues to perform weddings in the chapel.
Dr. David Burhans congratulates Mary June Schmick Jones, B’79, and Henry Jones, L’78.
“Having Dr. Burhans officiate at our wedding was the most important aspect of a UR wedding to us,” says Mary June Schmick Jones, B’79, who married Henry Jones, L’78, in the chapel on Aug. 4, 1979. “We both had a very special place in our hearts for Dr. Burhans and felt there could be no better minister to counsel us, guide us through the wedding jitters and direct our wedding.”
Burhans runs weddings by the clock—with or without a wedding planner. Everyone involved knows what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do it. Even so, he recalls one wedding in particular when everything seemed to go wrong.
A nasty thunderstorm barreled across campus as the ceremony was about to begin. The bridesmaids walked down the aisle, and the organist began to play the wedding march. At that moment, there was a great crash of thunder and a simultaneous flash of lightning that illuminated the Rose Window in the chapel. The lights went out, the organ slurred to a stop and darkness engulfed the sanctuary.
The Gazebo Legend
Legend has it that when two Richmond students kiss in the gazebo, they are bound to marry each other. The legend may not hold true for every couple, but it did for Kristen Noz Loschert, W’96, and Matt Loschert, R’97.
The night of their engagement, they parked near the lake, and Matt steered Kristen toward the gazebo for a better view of the Christmas wreaths on the library tower. Unbeknownst to Kristen, Matt had gone to her parents’ home the night before to ask for her hand in marriage.
Once they got to the gazebo, Matt asked Kristen if she remembered the time they had kissed in the gazebo when they were juniors and the legend they had heard about the gazebo.
“I was clueless,” Kristen says. “I told him that I knew the legend and then asked him what he was driving at.” At that point, Matt dropped to one knee. “You’re not doing what I think you’re doing, are you?” Kristen exclaimed.
Matt had tied the ring onto a string tied into his pocket so he wouldn’t drop it into the lake. He took it out and popped the question.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we will continue,” Burhans insisted. “Please stand.”
There was total silence as the congregation stood and the bride made her way down the 98-foot aisle, but when she stepped up to the altar, she tripped on her dress and only the groom saved her from falling on her face. Burhans proceeded with the ceremony and presented the couple to the audience, but the bride stumbled to her knees again as she stepped down from the chancel.
“Everyone gasped,” Burhans recalls. “The groom helped her up and they walked down the aisle. People were in disbelief.”
As the congregation filed out of the chapel, Burhans searched for the right words to comfort the embarrassed bride, who had returned to the sanctuary for photographs. But before he could say anything, she threw her arms around his neck and exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Burhans! No one will ever forget my wedding!”
Burhans does not remember the bride’s name, but he will never forget her “wonderful approach to life.”
Hot weddings
The chapel was not air-conditioned until the 1980s, so summer weddings there were notoriously hot. Even after central air was installed, the problem persisted.
It was a particularly warm day in late May when Jack Reagan, B’89, and Heather Berry Reagan, W’89, were married in the chapel in 1989.
“All the women planned to get dressed in the bride’s room,” Heather recalls. “Unfortunately, the heat was turned on high and would not cut off. With five bridesmaids, a flower girl, my mother, me and other people in the room, it was miserably hot. … I have pictures of my maid of honor dumping baby powder down the front of my dress and my bridesmaids fanning me. And my mother even took a picture of the maintenance employee who came to fix the heat—after we were done.”
Summer weddings were not the only hot ones. Burhans recalls a hot wedding that took place in Keller Hall in cold weather. The bride wanted a fire in the fireplace, and Burhans had to stand perilously close to the flames.
“Before the wedding was over, I thought my clothes would catch on fire,” he recalls. “People were laughing and saying it was the hottest wedding they had ever experienced.”
Fire played a critical role in the 1996 wedding of Vishwa Bhargava Link, L’93, and Eric R. Link, R’89 and L’97. They had to get permission from the fire marshal for their ceremony because the primary witness of a Hindu marriage is the fire deity Agni Devta.
“The three tiers at the front of the chapel allowed us to start the ceremony with the look of a western wedding,” Vishwa recalls. “I came down the aisle escorted by my father, then met Eric on the lower tier.” At that point, they were legally married in a civil service by John Paul Jones, their favorite professor from the Law School.
Vishwa Bhargava Link, L’93, and Eric R. Link, R’89 and L’97, experience a Hindu ceremony.
Then they stepped up to the second tier, where Vishwa’s brother read a Hindu poem and gave Eric a traditional Indian turban. Finally, they moved to the upper tier, where a priest performed the Hindu ceremony, witnessed by a flame that rose more than two feet high.
“We had to show the fire marshal what kind of vessel the priest would be burning the wicks and oil in,” Vishwa says. But “we are very thankful to UR and the chapel for their flexibility and open-mindedness to allow us to create our unique ceremony and hold it in such a beautiful place.”
Extracurricular weddings
The show must go on, but rehearsals can be rescheduled. Rehearsals for the University Players’ production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle were delayed for the wedding of Reed West, R’76, and Teresa Payne West, W’75, in 1974. They were both doing the lighting for the show.
Teresa Payne West, W’75, and Reed West, R’76, were married between play rehearsals.
“Half of the cast was either in our wedding or going to our wedding,” Reed explains. “My wife and I worked on the lighting plot for the play while we were on our weekend honeymoon.”
Basketball was the extracurricular activity that brought Elise Ryder Myers, W’03, and Jeff Myers, R’03, together. The Spider hoopsters met on the floor of the Robins Center, and when they announced their engagement, Athletic Director Jim Miller jokingly asked Elise if they would like to get married at halftime of a basketball game. They opted instead for the chapel and set the date for October 2005.
“Everything during the weekend was UR themed,” Elise recalls. “We had a simple wedding, but it was very romantic.” The reception included a 10-minute movie about how they met at the University. “The videographer interviewed both of us in Puryear Hall, where we had our first class together, and in the Robins Center. We even had clips of us playing in our basketball games.”
Sports also factored into the chapel wedding of Robin Holderness Newton, W’78, and David Newton, R’78, in 1981. The wedding was only 10 minutes long, but it coincided with an American League playoff game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the New York Yankees, and David’s cousin was the Yankee’s third-base coach.
When it was time to take photographs, the couple could not find David’s grandmother.
“She made it through the wedding and bolted out the door,” Robin recalls. “She had gone out to the car, opened the trunk and started watching the game on a battery-operated television. Who knew, when I chose that date, that the Yankees would make the playoffs?”
And who would have guessed that the chapel wedding of Marc Roper, ’95, and Tracey Brander Roper, ’94, would make The Tonight Show with Jay Leno? Someone sent Leno a picture of the campus road sign that directed people to the “Roper-Brander Wedding.” Leno used it in a bit about funny signs, saying something like, “If you’re into rodeos, here’s the wedding for you.”
Weddings everywhere
Many marriages end in court, but occasionally one starts there. Erin Torrey Ranney, ’02 and L’05, and Paul Ranney, L’05, married in the Law School’s Moot Court Room. A circuit court judge presided over the spring 2005 ceremony, and a violin trio played in the jury box.
“We got married in the room where we first met during orientation in the first year of law school,” Erin says. “Midway through planning our wedding, I realized that everybody in the class thought they were coming to the wedding.” The gallery was packed.
Wheeling & Dealing
Peggy Yarbrough Boulden, W’59, and Ed Boulden, R’64, believe their wedding reception in December 1959 was the first one held in Keller Hall.
“We decided that Keller Hall would be the perfect place,” Peggy recalls.
But Peggy had to persuade one more person, Charles Wheeler, the University’s treasurer at the time. Peggy remembers her trepidation. Wheeler had the reputation of being “extremely businesslike,” she recalls, “a true guardian of the purse strings of the University.”
Wheeler informed Peggy that no wedding reception had ever been held in Keller Hall, so there was no customary fee established for such a thing.
“He hemmed and hawed, and I smiled and smiled, and finally we reached an agreement,” Peggy says. “For the grand sum of $25, we could hold the reception in the hall, but the caterers had better leave everything spotless.” They shook hands on the deal, and the reception lived up to the couple’s expectations.
“We revel, even now, in remembering the Keller Hall reception,” Peggy says. “Everything was so beautiful, augmented by all the red and white Christmas flower arrangements. Of course, there were the ubiquitous Smithfield ham biscuits and a delicious white grape juice punch, but no champagne.”
That was another one of Wheeler’s conditions.
Scott Sparks, ’00, and Karianne Earner-Sparks, ’02, were married in court, too—North Court. They had planned a chapel wedding for October 2002, but after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the couple realized that Scott would soon be deployed overseas.
“We decided we wanted to be legally married before he left,” Karianne explains. Because it was Homecoming Weekend, the chapel was not available, so “the University offered us the use of the Blue Room in North Court,” Karianne says. “We were married by a justice of the peace on Oct. 27, 2001.”
Karianne says she and Scott originally planned to throw a bigger, more formal wedding when Scott returned from Kosovo. “But we realized that it turned out to be just what we wanted,” she recalls. “It was small, intimate and one of the happiest days of our lives.”
Another campus venue for intimate weddings is the gazebo, site of many proposals and first kisses.
Burhans’ favorite gazebo wedding featured a flotilla of ducks that swam up to the ceremony hoping for a bread-crumb buffet.
The wedding lasted only about 15 minutes, and just as Burhans finished saying, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the ducks broke into a chorus of quacks.
“They waited until just that moment to make noise,” Burhans says. “Everybody got the biggest kick out of that.”
Anxious moments
Ralph Shotwell, R’46, waited with his groomsmen in a small room at the front of Cannon Memorial Chapel. He was worried. His wedding to Virginia “Ding” Lambeth, W’47, was supposed to have started 15 minutes before, but no one had given him the signal to step into the sanctuary.
At the same time, Lambeth was experiencing similar anxiety as she and her bridesmaids waited in a room near the entrance to the chapel.
“I remember wondering if Virginia had changed her mind and failed to show,” Shotwell says. “She was just as worried, wondering if I had changed my mind.”
Finally, someone had to break the prenuptial stalemate. Dr. Solon Cousins, professor of Bible and Shotwell’s best man, walked to the back of the chapel to investigate. He sorted out the miscommunication, and the wedding soon was underway.
The marriage suffered a slow start, but it has lasted six decades. “On June 22, 2007,” Shotwell says, “we will celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary.”
Joan Tupponce is a freelance writer based in Richmond.
To read about more campus weddings, go to More Campus Wedding Stories.
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