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A whirlwind courtship that started in church, 16 years of loving Two of the ceremonies were formal church services with traditional gowns for the women and more than one hundred guests; two were small, church weddings attended by only family and close friends; one was a formal party in a private home; and one an informal gathering with just six friends. Instead of half a dozen bridesmaids with matching dresses and a photo booth at the reception, mid-life couples focused on honoring their history with friends and family as well as their future together. Each twosome put together a wedding that celebrated their unique perspective and relationship. Encouraged by her hair stylist, Estee Stene had invited Arne Krueger, a fellow church member, to brunch one Sunday morning. Less than three months later they became engaged, and on October 18, 2008, they were married at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. “I think it is miraculous for somebody my age to get married for the first time,” said Estee, 62, a retired high school guidance counselor. “I wanted a celebration! “When you’re single as long as I was, your friends become an extended family,” she said. People from all stages of her life and career came to the wedding, including the friend for whom she had been maid of honor when both were 19 years old. Their wedding party included “people who were important in our lives,” Estee said. Arne’s grown sons and young grandson as well as Estee’s nieces, nephew, god-daughter, and great niece made the trip down the aisle. Another nephew sang at the wedding and served as DJ and MC at the evening dinner-dance reception. Elderly church friends who were not able to attend the reception enjoyed fruit, bars and punch at the church following the ceremony. Since the couple had two households of “stuff” to combine, they asked for no gifts, but friends could instead donate, if they wished, to two charities. “I wanted something people could write off on their income taxes. How bad is that?” Estee said. “The most fun was knowing that people were having a good time and were happy for you.” Estee and Arne got a great laugh at their reception when one of their friends thanked them for bringing old friends together for the occasion. “Usually when this bunch gets together,” he said, “it’s for a funeral.” A bachelor for 68 years, Fred Behrens moved from California to care for his ailing mother, never dreaming that his new neighbor would become the love of his life. After Fred’s mother died, he and Janis Peterson, a retired kindergarten teacher, began walking together daily and became best friends, she said. They were married on Oct. 17, 2009. “We agreed that we wanted a small wedding that would be meaningful to us and our families,” she said. They invited only immediate relatives to the church ceremony and nearly everyone who attended participated in the service. Following the wedding, they hosted an elegant dinner reception for 150 guests at North Oaks Country Club. The head table was set in the middle of the room so that nobody sat in the back, Fred said. He and Janis wanted their guests to be able to visit comfortably, so a string quartet and piano soloist provided background music throughout the evening. A special memory of the event began just as the dinner was ending. A gentleman who had shared a 50-year friendship with Fred stood, took the microphone, and told of their history together, saying how much he and his friends admired the groom. “Friends of mine followed,” Janis said. “It just snowballed and before we finished I think at every table someone told how they were related to either Fred or me and gave us best wishes. People asked if that was something we had planned, but it all started with Fred’s friend.” Diane Wells, 58, and her husband, David Kwiat, 56, met at a theater production 24 years before their marriage on March 31, 2007. Shortly after they met, Diane married someone else, but she and David remained friends. Her marriage ended, and she was “quite happily single” for nearly ten years but then invited David to a pre-Christmas party at her home, and “something clicked,” she said. Since David is a drama teacher in Miami, they began a long-distance relationship and married when she retired from 35 years of teaching. Though David joked that he would prefer to get married during lunch break and eat afterward at a Chinese restaurant, their small but formal ceremony took place in the 17th floor condo of friends in Miami. Diane wore a long white gown with a train and guests came in formal attire. “David pushed for brevity while I felt it important to create something personal,” Diane said. “We wrote a vision statement which was printed in the program and read during the service and we wrote our own vows.” Diane created floral arrangements, bouquets, and boutonnières, and made the spectacular wedding cake which she and David served. Their favorite moments of the event, she said, were champagne toasts, offered by the two of them to each other and their guests and followed by toasts from just about everyone there. Lois West Duffy had been widowed for about 15 years when she met Joe Duffy while both served on the Minnesota State Arts Board. “Two weddings came out of that one board,” she said. “My single friends were asking ’how do you get appointed to that board?’” They, too, maintained a distance romance with Lois living in St. Paul and Joe in Rochester, MN. Then he decided to rent a villa in Italy and asked if she would be interested. “I had to think about it for about three seconds!” she said. “In Italy we decided to get married. I wasn’t in the habit of traveling abroad with male friends so my sons thought we might come back already married. We considered it, but we wanted our families involved. We wanted our wedding to be about family first, and also to honor our faith and the role that the arts have played in our lives.” They were married on January 24, 1998. She was pleased and surprised that Joe had definite ideas for the wedding. They were married at Hope Presbyterian Church in Richfield. Because of their involvement with arts and music organizations, they scored music by the small ensemble of the Rochester Choral Arts Ensemble and a processional composed especially for them by Skip James of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra who also served as organist. Joe, Lois, family members and the ministers stood facing each other in a circle at the alter, “a symbol of the interconnected family relationship we would have,” Lois said. “It was very moving, and even Joe and I were in tears. It made the audience laugh because neither of us could say our vows right away and it looked and sounded as though we were hesitating.” The service concluded with communion. “It was important to us to have this solemn ecumenical ’seal’ on the beginning of our marriage,” she said. The service was followed by a “magical” reception for about 50 guests at the Cowles Conservatory next to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. A blind date in June, 2001 started Robin Heggen and John Helgen on the romantic road. She had never been married and he was divorced with two young daughters. They became engaged in December, 2004, and married the next September when she was 40 and he was 48. “We could have eloped, but I wanted a wedding,” Robin said. “I had waited this long. I was going to wear the dress and walk down the aisle.” Their ceremony was “traditional with flares of our own personality,” she said. Before some 400 guests at Salem Covenant Church in New Brighton, she wore a cream silk gown and a delicate Norwegian wedding crown. Both Robin and John are church musicians, so they called on their friends and the result was “fabulous music,” including a specially commissioned choral piece, a 40-voice choir, a brass ensemble and a terrific organ and organist. The appetizer reception, featuring cakes from Cafe Latte, a St. Paul bakery, was held in the church’s new fellowship hall. “We wanted people to get up and chat, move around and enjoy themselves, not be tied down to a certain table of guests,” Robin said. John’s daughter Emma came up with a winning activity for the many children at the reception–a wedding cake piñata. At his surprise 65th birthday party last year, Earl Hipp turned the surprise around with a very public proposal of marriage to his companion and partner of 16 years, Gwen Parker. She was so surprised that she responded, “You’re kidding!” During the next weeks Gwen collected all of their rings, some of which they had given to each other, and they used those to create wedding rings. They were married April 9, 2009, in the chapel of DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun, in Tucson, AZ, where they spend winters. Everything in Tucson is informal, Earl said. He wore a black sport shirt and Gwen wore a polka dot halter dress. They were married by a friend, and the three couples who attended the wedding service represented their elders, families, and friends. When they returned to Minnesota in the summer, they invited about 100 family members and guests to a picnic and staged a short and very theatrical version of the Tucson wedding story. The celebration continued with potluck desserts, games for the children, bagpipers, and an alpen horn blessing played by a friend. “We did both the wedding and our reception in a way that was all for us!” Earl said. “We wanted to actually get married, keep it simple and personal, and honor the 16 years we had been together. The picnic reception was to share that, as much as possible with our friends and families.” Poet Robert Browning had the right idea: “. . . the best is yet to be.”
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Wedding Celebrations