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We'd love to help you in any way we can to have a perfect New Orleans Wedding.
As seen on
ajc.com, By DREW JUBERA Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
New Orleans -- The young Wyoming couple opted out of the voodoo wedding, the cemetery wedding and the Bourbon Street balcony wedding, where they'd have to step past a daiquiri machine to climb the stairs. They chose something more traditional: the by-the-banks-of-Big-Muddy wedding. At midnight. "You're the preacher?" the groom's stepfather asked as the Rev. Tony Talavera rolled up to a gazebo on the edge of the French Quarter in a three-wheeled scooter, honking a tricycle horn to announce his arrival. Owner of the only wedding chapel that local historians say has ever operated in the Quarter, Talavera went right to work: unfolding a portable table, assembling plastic champagne glasses, pinning a boutonniere on the groom's lapel. He then herded everybody together -- the bride crouched in her white gown to toss aside some litter in her path before taking her spot -- and performed a casually affecting 15-minute ceremony. Passing boats bayed and moonlight twinkled on the Mississippi. A drunk slumped on a nearby bench. Everybody clinked plastic glasses. "He's not what I was expecting, when he showed up tooting his horn," said Becky Cummings, the groom's mother. "But he was wonderful. I couldn't be more pleased." The mile-square French Quarter is the South's most potent blend of romance and decadence, and Talavera's chapel is a novel attempt to cash in. While weddings are performed regularly in the Quarter's quaint churches and elegant hotels, the chapel is the district's lone establishment devoted solely to marital impulsiveness. The tourist-glutted neighborhood has gambling, hookers and drunks, so the added Vegas-style wedding service seems an ideal fit. Talavera hopes to make New Orleans a destination for eloping couples, and he's officiated at almost 500 weddings in the past 17 months. Talavera operates out of a converted coffin-making business on a dreary block of Burgundy Street, where the Quarter's charms start to peter out. He performs about half his weddings inside his cheerfully down-market chapel, the other half anywhere else (he offers swamp weddings). About 20 percent of the couples marry the same week they decide to take the plunge, and 90 percent of the business is out-of-towners. Most find the chapel on the Internet (www.frenchquarterwedding.com) or while strolling the Quarter. The previous owner developed a network of hotel concierges who steer canoodling couples Talavera's way. He marries a lot of military personnel, does vow renewals, performs same-sex covenants. He's rushed through ceremonies so couples could catch their honeymoon cruise ships. Tourists often gather around his Jackson Square weddings and break into applause and toss the couples money when he finishes. Street people stumble up to shake the newlyweds' hands. "We're bringing the romance that's already here," said Talavera, 46, a gentle, floppy-haired bear of a man who combines a dreamy, childlike sincerity with an entrepreneur's eye for the prize. "I enjoy the romance. We give them memories that will last a lifetime." The chapel opened two years ago by Don Baker. He'd already hired Talavera as an officiate and helped him become an ordianed reverend. He saw Talavera as a natural. So he sold him the business. "He puts more emphasis on the meaning of the wedding than I did," Baker allowed. Talavera indeed carries a kind of been-through-it serenity. Battered and abused as a child in California, he was a chef in San Francisco and a card dealer in Las Vegas before moving near Pittsburgh for a liver transplant. He met his future wife, Lou Ann, and the two married poolside in, naturally, Las Vegas. He got involved in organ donor awareness programs, then opened antiques stores and traveled to shows around the country. Driving through New Orleans last summer to attend a show, he met Baker and found his calling. "I never met my aptitude for life, and now here I am, in a new state and a new state of life," Talavera said. "It's just romantic here. Plus, I thought there was a lot of money." Talavera describes his ceremonies as economical, stress-free alternatives to the kinds of relationship-cracking weddings that can take months to plan and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Cost of a basic French Quarter Wedding Chapel ceremony: $199. (Senior citizens: $179. Cops and servicemen: $159.) Average length: 20 minutes. There's a 72-hour waiting period for a marriage license in Louisiana, but that's easily sidestepped. Couples can walk five blocks to City Hall and apply for a waiver. It takes an hour. The only caveat: The office is closed on weekends. "The pressures of planning a wedding and paying for it drives a lot of couples to elope," Talavera said. "This is an elope destination." Talavera has seen his share of weddings that mirror the City That Care Forgot. He performed one ceremony inside a bar, another while the best man was bent over sick from eating oysters. He arrived at one hotel wedding to find the groom falling-down drunk (he'd talked with the couple the day before, so exempted his rule against marrying the inebriated). As he pronounced the vows, the groom slurred aloud: "I just love you, Tony!" The ceremonies could get loopier. Talavera hopes to open a chapel on Bourbon Street, the district's decadent soul. He's applied for zoning approval from the city. Some locals worry about a troubling trend. "I don't think they want to convert it into a Las Vegas. You know, 'Viva New Orleans!' " said Hector Pineda, inspector for the Vieux Carré Commission, which regulates renovations in the Quarter. But Baker thinks it would be great. He said every French Quarter Wedding Chapel service -- no matter where it's performed -- has one thing in common. "The people are genuinely in love," he said. "On that day." Also reprinted at Houston Chronical Sunday Edition
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