It helps to be a fool for love on your wedding day.
On Friday afternoon in Lawrenceville, it was pretty much unavoidable.
For two hours, couples streamed in and out of Courtroom 1C in the Gwinnett County Justice & Administration Center to be married by Magistrate Judge Ruth McMullin. Some were formally dressed and accompanied by big, boisterous retinues of friends and family. Others arrived with only each other for company, and, in one instance, convinced a T-shirted spectator to film the brief ceremony on the groom’s smart phone.
One thing all 14 couples had in common, though: April Fools Day as their wedding day. For richer for poorer, in quippiness and ill humor, as long as they all shall live.
“Oh my gosh, I don’t know if they know that,” Arielle Davie, who’d accompanied the newly married Bryce and Lena McCord to the courthouse, looked startled when reminded of the date. But now that it was official, Davie figured it would be safe to broach the subject at dinner. “I think it’ll crack them up.”
On the other hand, some couples knew exactly what they were doing by getting married on America's proverbial slip-on-a-banana-peel day. Boy, did they know! When Sandra Barrett and Derrick Johnson finally decided to tie the knot after 26 years together, the Buford couple's children had suggested that Valentine's Day might be nice.
Nothing doing, said the bride.
“I said, ‘I want to do it on April Fools Day, it’s perfect,’” Barrett said a few minutes before the ceremonies began at 2 p.m. “‘Because if I tell my family and friends we’re getting married, they’ll never believe me.’”
Just then, she stopped to humorously chastise her daughter, Camille Johnson, 24, who was busy Snapchatting the entertaining scene of her parents and other abouts-to-be-married outside the courtroom.
“Here I’m trying to convince everyone I’m pulling a prank, and you’re putting everything on the Internet,” Barrett chuckled.
Spoiler alert: It was no prank. Barrett and Johnson were very nearly the first couple to get married Friday. The only ones to make it down the snug courtroom’s makeshift aisle ahead of them may also have been the only couple even more eager to have April 1st on their marriage license.
Michael Kane and Miranda Durham, a pair of 22-year-olds who met a few years back while working at the Kroger on Gwinnett Drive and Grayson Highway, were so determined to “save this date,” they’d booked it online in January.
“It fit in well with my sense of hilariousness,” Kane said.
You don’t know the half of it. For a variety of reasons, the couple wanted to get married sooner rather than later, at the courthouse. To be followed by a “huge ceremony” and celebration later. They’ve already settled on the date for that one as well:
October 13, 2017.
That’s a Friday the 13th.
For some couples, it was just coincidence that brought them to Courtroom 1C on this particular day. Gwinnett County offers to marry couples for free three afternoons each week; but online reservations are required and they go fast. Several couples who’d wanted different dates because it was someone’s birthday or a special anniversary, had gotten shut out. When April 1 was their next best option, they chose to ignore superstition and say “I do” to the idea of living happily ever after as husband and wife.
The Lucky 14 may even have gotten an advantage by by getting married on April Fools Day, said the mother of one bride.
“I think that it’s wonderful to get married on this day,” said Paulette Crosby, who’d come from Cleveland, Oh., to watch her daughter Leilani Manuel tie the knot with Aquarius Angry. “Because they’re going to fool the odds. Some people say the odds are against marriage. But they’re going to fool them.”
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