What brought Paul Camper and Xiaoming Gao to their courthouse wedding today began with a chance meeting on a Metro Center train platform not more than three months ago.

“We started talking about things we were mutually interested in, like China,” says Camper, who, as a consultant, has worked on Chinese affairs. “It was a very happy circumstance.”

Gao was visiting Washington while preparing for a United Nations conference next month up in New York as part of a large Chinese delegation on youth issues. “I wanted to see the country and visit a few places.” She’ll be visiting a few more spots now. “It was a very productive encounter,” Gao says.

And how: Camper, 59, remembers when he knew he’d have to propose—over dinner at Dupont Circle’s legendary Nora restaurant, “just professing my love for Xiaoming and the difference she’s made in my life.” After realizing their “personal, professional, and spiritual” bond, he proposed soon after over another dinner in Ellicott City, Md.

Read More “Courthouse Wedding No. 4: ‘A Very Productive Encounter’” »

The wedding party assembles for a few pre-matrimonial snapshots.

“Say Wisconsin!” says one photographer. Everyone smiles. The followup: “Say Lebanese!”

“Taverna!” replies bride Rima Karim.

The geographical references reflect the bride and groom, respectively. Mike Neal, 37, is a native of Fond du Lac, and Karim, 39, grew up locally to a big Middle Eastern family.

This wedding is some 13 years in the making. They met in 1995 at Crow Bar, the late lamented West End biker saloon. “I invited him to be in my book club,” Karim remembers. She can’t recall that first book, “but we did read Geek Love,” she says. The title of the freak-show novel by Katherine Dunn, in fact, is now the name of their wireless Internet connection.

Read More “Courthouse Wedding No. 3: ‘Save the Money for the Booze’” »

The man is dressed to the nines, in a tan suit. The woman looks even better, in a simple white dress and a big smile.

The reporter introduces himself, asks to sit in on their wedding, hear their love story. Says the man, “It’s quite a story.”

Officiant Toni Gore launches into her script: “This is a civil marriage, not a religious one. It is a contract….” Halfway through, the man notices his Bluetooth is still stuck in his ear—he pulls it out, half-embarrassed. They exchange rings. Gore’s instructions are precise: “Put it on the third finger of her left hand.”

The woman goes to sign the marriage certificate. “Have you been practicing your new name?” Gore asks.

“No, I have not. This is the first time!” she replies.

Now for that story: The couple has been living together for 15 years, the man explains. She teaches, he’s in corporate management. Finally, late last year, the two decided they’d get hitched. They came down to the courthouse, got a license, set a date—no big deal.

Then she got sick—gallbladder trouble. Last week, she got the diagnosis: terminal cancer.

Read More “Courthouse Wedding No. 2: Sadness Become Joy” »

“You brought a camera?” asks officiant Toni Gore.

Neither Andrew McPherson, 26, nor Emily Buehler, 25, have brought a camera today. In fact, they haven’t brought rings, either.

“We’re trying to keep this on the DL,” Buehler tells Gore.

They’re not keeping it hidden from angry parents or scorned lovers or anything like that. Rather, Buehler and McPherson have a big-deal ceremony scheduled next month in Scotland. It’ll take place in a historic kirk in the lowlands near the English border. “The heather’s out right now, so it’s very beautiful,” Buehler says.

Read More “Courthouse Wedding No. 1: ‘On the DL’” »

Today, on Sex and the City Paper Day, my colleagues are covering such lascivious themes as prostitutes, domestic violence, and abortion protesters. Not me—whether due to latent Catholic guilt or other reasons—I am covering love at its pure, untrammeled best: courthouse weddings.

If you chose to wed this morning at the H. Carl Moutrie I District of Columbia Courthouse, you would have entered on Indiana Avenue NW, past the seemingly interminable entrance renovation. You would have risen four floors through the atrium on escalators, passing the packed courtroom where a judge would be sentencing accused child murderer Banita Jacks. You would step off the escalator and wend through hallways, past the domestic violence branch, past a family court proceeding. And you would walk into the marriage bureau office, through a perfectly normal waiting room, under a flowered arch, and into the wedding chamber. There, underneath the seal of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and another flowered arch, you would be wed by the lovely Toni F. Gore, branch chief of the family court division.

“Please approach the arch!” she’ll tell you when the time comes.

Read More “The H. Carl Moultrie I Courthouse Wedding Experience” »