(Credit: Chris Casella)

The chaotic bustle of a wedding weekend: families and flowers, gowns and grooms, rice and bubbles and tears, normalcy disrupted by the impending impact of a major life change – it’s a summer scene most of us know all too well.

By the time the vows have been uttered and the union sealed, most are happy to have simply made it through the day with their wits intact.

For Vicki Bennett, however, it’s just another day at the office.

Ordained through a Unitarian church, the former professor at Ohio State, Columbus State and Franklin University has found her calling in the business of matrimony: she runs a full-time, full-service wedding chapel out of her North Columbus home.

“I was a teacher, and I thought that was my path, but apparently I was wrong,” she said.

After purchasing a larger home, Bennett spent more than $80,000 on renovations, converting the first floor into a two-room chapel and the backyard into a sprawling garden, complete with fragrant mimosa trees and a gazebo altar. Voila – Weddings R Us was born. Yes, that’s its real name.

“I basically gutted this place and started over,” she said. “All of the money, everything that I’ve made doing this, has been put back into it.”

The tasteful, polished aesthetic dissociates Bennett’s space from some of the more tawdry alternatives to walk-in chapels, but affordability remains a priority.

“Since we opened, I’ve only raised the price on one of the packages, and it was only by $15.”

On most days, Bennett officiates multiple ceremonies, often performing a dizzying number of walk-in appointments, such as the uniting of Kelsea and Allen I witnessed on a particularly busy Friday morning. Together for only three months, at ages 18 and 20, respectively, they’re a Chuck Berry song come to life.

Their wedding day began as Kelsea timidly poked her head inside the chapel doors, hoping she had arrived ahead of her man. “The groom is on his way,” she explained. “I don’t want him to see me until I’m at the end of the aisle. Is there somewhere I can hide?”

After directing her to the back room, Bennett explained that while many of her clients make appointments, walk-ins such as theirs are common.

“A lot of people will come in [in plain clothes] with their marriage license, and just want to make it legal,” she explained.

As a practicing Buddhist, Bennett tailors her vows to different religious and cultural preferences – even taking an intensive language course in order to perform ceremonies in Spanish. “I’ve had people who didn’t speak English at all,” she said. “There is a really high demand for it around here.”

Bennett offers package deals for couples looking for a somewhat traditional ceremony, including professional photography, as well as gown rental and fitting.

“I have a whole room of gowns,” she confided. “I purchased all of them and you can see them on the website and rent them with [the packages].”

However, she is equally open to the more bizarre requests.

“Oh my god,” she said with a laugh. “The goths. The groom had on a black skirt, black velvet shirt, platform shoes. His hair was to the ceiling and they all had on a thousand pounds of black makeup.” She recalls another couple in Westerville who had a graveyard set up in their yard, the groom emerging from a coffin during the ceremony. “If you can imagine it, it’ll happen,” she said. Impressively, Bennett is able to remember even less peculiar details about her more than 6,000 ceremonies over the years, due in part to her meticulous photo documentation of every couple. “It is very important to me to have these photos,” she explained while scrolling through the chapel's website gallery. “It’s amazing. It’s almost like they’re my children in a way.”

Kelsea and Allen’s parents arrived, and their somewhat awkward introductions and pleasantries indicated that this was a first-time interaction. As they filed into the “Elopement Room,” Bennett assured them she had tissues on hand.

“Don’t worry, her dad has a whole pocket of them,” said the mother of the bride. The ceremony began with Bennett reciting the self-written benediction she bestows upon every couple.

“And when things get rough, as they will in any relationship, I ask you to stand before one another as you are doing here today and remember this day, this moment.” She later noted that she worked out these vows on her way to marry two of her former students. “There is so much excitement and love and positive energy in here all the time,” she said. “People can lose sight of that: how they felt on this day.”

In the next room, Kelsea’s mother embraced her new son-in-law, whom she endearingly refers to as “that boy that’s taking my baby away.” Another small wedding party filed into the chapel, the next step in a typically busy walk-in day for Bennett.

“There will always be weddings,” Bennett said. “That is one thing that never changes. I’ve married very young people, and I’ve had people in their 80s … everyone who comes in here is just madly in love.”

Weddings R Us
2511 McCutcheon Rd.
(614) 471-9333
www.weddingsrus.net

Hours: Tuesday – Friday, 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
By Reservation Only: Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and evenings 6 to 8 p.m.