c. 2007 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Sarah Snook and Chase Mohr put their own twist on “till death do us part” as they sealed their marital vows with a kiss and a high-five in the tiny chapel in Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery.

Ornate stone mausoleums stood solemn witness as Snook walked through the bronze doors of Jeptha Wade Memorial Chapel to meet her groom.

The couple turned and faced each other in front of the catafalque, a platform that usually holds a casket, and their officiant, Richard Ostendorf, started the May 19 ceremony by asking an obvious question: What did the 30 guests think when they found out Snook and Mohr would wed in a cemetery?

Getting married at Lake View, a place that has about 700 burials annually, may seem strange to some, but not to the six more couples who are scheduled to be married at the chapel this year.

Such joyous occasions aren’t out of place at the 138-year-old cemetery, which is often more fun than funereal.

It hosts classic-car shows; historical, horticultural and geological walks; and appearances by actors portraying two of its notable “residents” _ John D. Rockefeller and President James A. Garfield. It even has its own private-label root beer _ Lake View Brew.

Wade Chapel brides say they marry there because they can’t imagine a more beautiful place than the 26-by-32-foot miniature chapel that looks like a Greek temple. It was built in 1901 to honor Jeptha H. Wade, the founder of Western Union Telegraph Co. and the cemetery’s first president.

The cemetery, on Cleveland’s East Side, contains one of only four chapels in the country with interiors designed by renowned glass craftsman Louis Comfort Tiffany. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Getting married in a cemetery wasn’t a stretch for Snook, 25, who used to work in a funeral home. She grew up near Knollwood Cemetery in Mayfield Heights. “It was my playground,” she said.

Snook wanted to wear her great-great-grandmother’s 1870 wedding dress, but it was too small. Instead, she copied it _ in black. She also brought her 1966 mint green Cadillac hearse _ she belongs to a classic-car club _ to carry them to their reception.

“Maybe we have a different perspective,” said Mohr, 24, “but we think Lake View reflects the importance of life and is a place of its celebration.”

Deanna Bremer Fisher, marketing director of the Cleveland Restoration Society, chose Wade Chapel for her 2005 wedding to Hugh Fisher because of its elegance. The chapel’s size, grandeur and intimacy made it ideal for her small ceremony.

“We have magnificent religious structures in Cleveland, but most were too big,” she said. “It’s a little jewel box, a gem of a building.”

Eight-foot-high glass mosaics illustrating the journey from death to life everlasting run the length of two sides of the chapel. Bare-chested rowers, their muscles defined by hundreds of sparkling glass tiles, move their barges toward the Resurrection window. The window, a Tiffany masterpiece depicting Christ and his angels, was first shown at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris.

That’s where Jeptha Wade II, the telegraph pioneer’s grandson, saw the window. He bought it for the chapel he was about to have built of Vermont granite blocks, carved and set by Italian stonemasons. The exact cost of building the chapel, estimated to be between $150,000 to $250,000, has been lost to history. It was a gift to the cemetery from the Wade family.

Two 3-foot-tall chandeliers carved from single alabaster blocks, along with six tall electric candles, softly light the chapel’s glittering interior. Legend has it that Charles F. Brush, the inventor of the arc lamp (who also is buried in Lake View), rushed to electrify the chapel for its dedication. Tiffany feared that candle and kerosene soot would blacken its magnificent glasswork.

It costs $550 to rent the chapel for a wedding. That includes rehearsal time, the use of the chapel’s organ, extra chairs (the chapel has eight pews) and a docent who turns away sightseers during ceremonies. The chapel holds about 60 people.

When Amy Alexy suggested to her fiance and her mother that Wade Chapel would be a perfect wedding location, she said they were a little put off. “They said, `A cemetery? Are you sure?”’

“But I was dead serious,” said Alexy, who married her husband, Grayson, there in 1997. “Wade Chapel is the perfect place for a wedding.”

Their sons Bowen, 5, and Finn, 3, are so used to the chapel, they refer to Wade as “the fa-la-la-la-la building” _ they go to public caroling gatherings there every Christmas.

Eighteen of her relatives are buried at Lake View, making her wedding there extra special, said Alexy, 35, whose family carries on her childhood tradition of decorating graves on Memorial Day. “Everybody was there, whether they were alive or dead.”

Bridgette Cook, 31, who soon will move back to Cleveland Heights from Atlanta, plans an October wedding to Igor Bondayrenko, 36, at Wade Chapel. “I wasn’t trying to be weird,” she said. “Wade Chapel is so beautiful. People who haven’t seen it really have no idea how awe-inspiring it is.”

Wade brides have to be prepared when it comes to bemused guests, said Cook, who plans an otherwise traditional day. She said her friends understand having a wedding at a cemetery, and some of his don’t.

“We tell them, `Didn’t you get the memo on full black dress? Did we mention we were releasing crows?’ You have to have a little fun with it.”

(Sarah Crump writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

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