Lamonte, Joyce and the big scene

The centerpiece of every wedding is obvious: The bride's entrance.

The afterthought of almost every wedding is the groom's entrance — usually through a side door, so as not to make a big scene.

But Lamonte decided that he had earned a big scene.

And then...look below. There's no need to discuss what Joyce did when she walked in.

As she entered, I turned around to grab a few shots of Lamonte's expression. Clearly, Joyce made the bigger entrance.

And the rest of the night...that was one big scene after another.

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Cat food: the key to the pre-wedding interview

Phil and Amy have, for the most part, great memory recall. When we sat down earlier today for their pre-wedding interview, they gave me a nuanced, layered story of how they met and fell in love. I'll write that tale after their ceremony, in October.

The story involves antiques, breast cancer, the Singer Spotlight program at FitzGerald's Nightclub, a cat named Saffron, and her food. Phil was trying to tell me how he proposed, but said he had a mental black-out as he popped the question, and couldn't remember how he did it — until Amy reminded him about the cat food.

After that, Phil remembered everything.

We all brawl

I've covered plenty of fundraisers. None like this, though.

The University of Illinois-Chicago chapter of HOPE WorldWide held a "Mario Kart Brawl" benefit for a nearby homeless shelter on April 10. Grown-up participants squeezed onto kid-sized Razor Flash Rider 360 scooter/tricycle things and raced around a cone- and string-lined track in the university's recreation center.

The track included several tight turns and a figure-8. A lot of crashes and spin-outs resulted.

But the calamity produced more than $400 for the shelter — along with a few bruised egos, and a lot of laughs.

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Opportunities told

If the stories had not been so interesting, I suppose the doughnut would have been full.

Tim Stafford explains to a Navy Pier tourist why his middle-schoolers are not disgusting

I got to work in Red Kiva for the first time on Feb. 26, when Catalyst Chicago brought me in to photograph their "Classroom Story Slam." The room was interesting: Three seating levels, including a circular couch that pulls up to the front of the stage. That's got to be a toughie for jazz trios or DJs — to be performing for the backs of people's heads as they sip and try to mingle above what you are playing.

This event's performers (five trained storytellers) had no such problems. A few listeners sat on the half of the couch-doughnut that faced the speakers, the rest sat or stood behind me — but there was not much mingling as this group shared their experiences.

Tim Stafford, Bob Boone, Ray Salazar, Michele Weldon, Kynshasa Ward

This was the first of three slams Catalyst will organize this year; it's theme was "Opportunity." Even though I was "working" (taking pictures...tough "work"), bits of what they told the crowd are sticking with me. Michele described opportunity as a meteor shower; Ray spoke about his struggles with convincing bright students to grab a hold of opportunity; Tim recalled a lost opportunity to confront man who disrespected his middle-school students.

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Out with the Clarksons

Photographing this family on the last warm, sunny day of the season was a joy.

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Jeff and Celeste spent 20 minutes on a corner

I thought I'd seen it all in the world of wedding ceremonies.

Then, rather than just walk down the aisle, this couple decided to charge me.

I'm not going to tell you the most important part of this story. Jeff and Celeste shared it with me, and I'm going to leave it at that.

Besides, the rest of their tale is pretty good without it.

Jeff and Celeste vowed their lives to each other at the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oak Park (I'd worked there just a few weeks earlier and was happy to return), bringing to fruition more than five years of maneuvering by their mutual friend, Jaclyn. Getting them to fall in love took time, career changes, airplane trips and Uhaul rentals...but it paid off.

"When I was washing my dishes back in OKC, I was thinking through the events of the prior day and burst into tears," Celeste told me of the night after her and Jeff's first date. "'I think I met my husband,' I told my then-roommate LuAnne.

To begin the story, we go way back in the day in Chicago, where Jaclyn and Jeff became friends through church. Jaclyn is a reporter, and in 2009, a job opportunity took her down to Oklahoma City, where she befriended Celeste, a law professor.

Jaclyn had an immediate feeling about Jeff and Celeste.

"She had us in mind for each other from the start, but was clever and strategic enough to wait," Celeste told me.

Recognizing that both were intent on career goals (Jeff had launched a small business, and Celeste was working like 300 hours a week), Jaclyn waited more than a year to broach the romance subject. Once she got the vibe that the right time was nearing, Jaclyn told Celeste that she wanted to set her up with...some guy in Chicago. A mere 806 miles away.

But Celeste trusted Jaclyn's judgment, and kept it in mind. Eventually, a work-related conference popped up in Milwaukee; Celeste made the time to drive down to the Second City to meet this Jeff guy, and Jaclyn came along.

"The date was awesome, a perfect out-of-towner's day in Chicago," Celeste recalled.

And here comes the most important part.

Suspecting that her groom had a devious cake-smooshing plot in mind,
Celeste came prepared.

"What really stood out about Jeff that day was in a conversation we had on the walk to Navy Pier. It was kind of intense. We actually stopped on the corner and talked without moving for what seemed like 20 minutes."

The subject of that conversation is superfluous. It suffices to say that they started to fall in love on that corner.

After taking Celeste back to O'Hare, Jeff called Jaclyn and told her that he had a good feeling. That night, as Celeste washed her dishes, that good feeling overwhelmed her.

Doing the long-distance thing, they got to know each other better, and soon they were dating steadily. Madcap career shifts followed, and Celeste moved to Jacksonville, Fla. — an easy 1,075 miles away — while the state of Illinois hired Jeff away from his own business.

The couple straightened things out, and Celeste erased all but a quarter mile of the distance when she moved up to Evanston in the summer of 2014. And now, the distance is zero.

I'm leaving the "clincher" moment out, but...you just read the best part of the story.

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Mark and Tina: "We can break some rules"

They had been here once before — this was their vow renewal ceremony, not their wedding — but Mark and Tina did something I'd never seen previously, in any service of this sort.

Andrew, Tina, Alyssa and Mark

Mark and Tina took their oaths 20 years ago, and renewed them at the United Lutheran Church of Oak Park. The bridesmaids and groomsmen from the original ceremony all had this day off, though: the only two people standing with the couple were their children, Andrew and Alyssa.

In a standard ceremony, that would mean that no one outside the immediate family would receive any recognition. Mark and Tina, however, had a remarkably uncommon agenda...

Friends Dell and Lara, and Tina's sister Avis (seated)

In the middle of the ceremony, the couple grabbed the microphone, turned around, said they were going to break some of the rules, and addressed their guests. Mark and Tina took turns — and several minutes — giving detailed thank-yous to family members and close friends. The bride and groom shared with a crowd of around 200 their stories about a few of the people who had stood at their sides 20 years ago, and had remained there through the decades and trials that have followed.

I haven't a clue what this couple spent putting their vow renewal together, but they did it so that, at its high point, they could shift their gathered friends' attention from themselves to some of the people they felt indebted to. I've never seen a bride and groom use their ceremony for that purpose before, but I hope to see it again.

The finale included an overhead ball-drop, and plenty of bubbles

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