"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.

Gao, 29, wasn't expecting it; she thought it was just another date. "It took me a little longer...to know it was the right thing," she says. "A few days more."

But she knew it was.

Their union demonstrated many of the trappings of the modern American wedding. Camper bought her a sizable Tiffany diamond ring. ("I have to step back, it fills the screen too much," said officiant Toni Gore, taking a picture of the rock.)

And there will be a big honeymoon: Before the end of the year, the couple plans to travel to China, visiting Gao's family in Beijing to be followed by a retreat to Tibet. They'll then repair back to the States and their new apartment in the Kennedy-Warren building in Cleveland Park.

About the only unorthodox thing might the setting for their vows. The couple was joined by Camper's brother and sister-in-law, and their three young children.

Says Camper, "We talked about doing a family celebration, having my parents come from Oregon...but I guess it was really a matter of timing. Xiaoming has her conference coming up, and we wanted to move forward with paperwork, get her a work permit."

Gao says she has no problem with the courthouse ceremony: "For me, like city hall is the center of the city. It's like a symbol of becoming part of the city."

"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.

They'd been talking marriage for a few weeks, Neal says, then got officially engaged on Saturday. Monday morning, they got a wedding appointment. Gotta start "planning for our financial future," he says. "We wanted to start off on the right foot."

Four friends came with the couple today, including members of the "Q Street Crew"—folks who lived with them in a Dupont group house.

Why the courthouse? Neal says "there's a hundred different reasons." Karim says it's simple: "The party's the important part. Save the money for the booze."

In fact, she says, there may be four parties in all: One with her family, one with his family in the Midwest, and a couple with friends. And the Midwest sojourn, she warns Neal, ain't gonna cut it for a honeymoon: "I want a real honeymoon. I want to completely unplug."

For now, it's lunch, then dinner tonight at Karim's parents' house in Vienna. The low-key affair extends to the wardrobe: She's wearing a "crazy, gypsy, sequined outfit" she found in her sister's closet. She bought a $10 shirt to complete the ensemble.

As for Neal, who is wearing khakis and a white short-sleeved shirt: "She told me what to wear."

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.

The wedding went on as scheduled today. "None of our family know this is what we're doing," she explains. The thinking goes, she says: "Let's make sure we do all the things we have to do to make it right....Sometimes you just do what you know you should have done a long time ago."

(To protect the couple's privacy while they continue informing friends and family of her illness, I have agreed to keep their names and other identifying details private.)

The wedding was supposed to be a low-key affair, and it was. Both had married before. "We'd gone through the ceremonial hoopla," he says. She adds, "Been there, done that."

Her daughter flew in from out of state. "We were just gonna call her and tell her that we got married," he says, but he decided to have her come up so they could break her the news in person. She's the only person with them today, snapping pictures of them smiling, beaming into each other's eyes.

He reflects on why they decided to get married in the first place: "As you get older, you realize you've got to take care of legal things, make sure your house is in order." They'd "procrastinated" on those sorts of things, she said.

And now...

She says it's been harder on her husband. He's the one who has had to tell most of their friends about the cancer. "He's taken the weight off of me by telling everybody," she says. "You just relive it every time you say it."

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.

The two met more than five years ago in Grenoble, France, while studying abroad together. They went on to live for more than a year together in the U.K. Thing is, getting a marriage license there is a bit of a hassle. And it's rather expensive—upward of 300 pounds. So the District of Columbia, where they've resided for three years, is damn good bargain.

They've also got "stag" and "hen" parties set up in Europe. For his stag affair, McPherson's grown a nice bit of facial hair—a sort of combination Fu Manchu and soul patch he deems "Western, or trucker-style." It will match nicely, he says, with the tuxedo T-shirts his fellow partygoers plan to don for the festivities. Buehler will be meeting up with friends in Amsterdam for her shindig.

Gore starts the ceremony. Since they don't have rings, she omits the ring-exchange portion of the ceremony, turning a five-minute affair into a three-minute affair.

"You're just practicing with me?" Gore asks. "That's OK, you can practice with me."

After the ceremony, the couple sits and wait for copies of their marriage certificate—a relative bargain at $10 apiece. No party after that, or even brunch: It's back to work for the both of 'em. McPherson's headed to his international development job, and Buehler, econ textbook in tow, will head to her public health firm.

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.

Gore has been doing weddings here for three years. She estimates she's done at least 300 of them. And she doesn't do matrimony every day—just Wednesdays; her deputies handle the other days. You have to call ahead to schedule a half-hour slot, and today, she'll be doing four.

If you ask about her job, she'll tell you: "I do two happy things: marriages and adoptions." But Gore spends the rest of her work week doing other stuff—making sure courtrooms are staffed, reviewing court records, and other managerial tasks. And one other thing: "I don't tell them I do divorces. They don't need to hear that."

She doesn't have to do weddings—when she was promoted to branch chief, she insisted on still doing a few a week. Gore is very good at making a courthouse wedding—what many couples expect to be a prosaic thing—into something worth remembering. It starts with the room, which is clean, quiet, and well-appointed. And it has to be reserved; there's no walk-ins. "It's not a cattle call," Gore says. "It's their special day."

Her favorite wedding, she'll tell you, happened this Valentine's Day—the first time the marriage bureau had been open on a Saturday. She married a couple that had been living together for more than 20 years. They had several children, some of them teenagers.

"At the end of the ceremony, the [teenage] son said, 'Mom, now we've got the same name.' And they hugged. Her son was so happy. They kept hugging."