Thirty-five years ago today Carl Crosier and I stood before the altar at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and pledged our love and commitment to each other. Today is our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary and it seems hardly possible that so many years have gone by, so many musical productions, so many notes!

Yesterday I played a wedding at LCH and I was recounting to singer Naomi Castro  about our wedding 35 years ago. We decided there was only one organist whom we wanted to play the wedding — and that was McNeil Robinson from New York. In order to get him to Hawaii we arranged for a two-concert series: an all-Bach recital at LCH and an all-Franck recital at St. Andrew’s. Sometimes the phone rang 50 times in one day with people calling in for tickets! Imagine all this in the midst of wedding preparations.

My sister, Doris, came 17 days early and we sewed up a storm — the maid of honor’s dress, my hat, a large wedding banner (with a logo designed by artist Roland Roy) and stoles for the three clergy. Carol Langner silkscreened the covers of the wedding bulletin, the insides of which were done  on a typewriter, not a computer, of course.

Six months previously, Carl had gone to Kauai with his parents but inadvertently left his driver’s license at the car rental office. I insisted he get a new one before we went on our honeymoon, and when he finally got to the police station a week before the wedding, he was told the rental car office mailed the license back to Honolulu. He was told he’d have to apply for a new license, and right off the bat flunked the eye test. After he got new glasses a day later, he took the driving test and flunked that too, by making an illegal left turn. With all these strikes against him, he was a bit apprehensive on our wedding day, especially since he had only met my family for the first time, not to mention the fact that he had been fired from his day job a week before.

We did things our way — and entered the church together on Peter Hallock’s Easter processional for voices and handbells, sung by the Compline Choir. During communion, he joined the choir on Maurice Duruflé’s Ubi caritas, then I went over to the organ and played François Couperin’s Tierce en taille. McNeil Robinson improvised a grand toccata for the exit procession.

What a wild ride it has been!