Bride and Groom Get All Dolled Up for This Wedding

--The bridegroom wore a custom-made tux and the bride wore a white satin gown. “It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” said Paul Kowalski, a self-described minister in the Universal Life Church, who married Amanda Marie to Scott Joseph--two Cabbage Patch dolls--under an arch of balloons before a crowd of more than 200 in Oxford, Mass. “It was the biggest wedding I’ve ever seen,” added Kowalski, who staged the stunt with all proceeds going to A Wish Come True Inc., a Webster, Mass., group that helps chronically ill children. Kowalski charged $6 for adults and $4 for children to watch the brief ceremony, attended by real children as ring bearer, flower girl and maid of honor. Most of the people in the audience were mothers and children, many with Cabbage Patch dolls in tow. “Boy, I never had it this good at my wedding,” said one woman. The bride and groom were whisked off after the ceremony in a blue stretch limousine, complete with television set, bar and sun roof, to a nearby hotel for their honeymoon night. Kowalski said the wedding was at the request of Kelley Kaminski, 9, of Webster, and Joseph Tricone, 8, of Worcester, the children of friends of his, who owned the dolls.

--The Grand Ole Opry, the Nashville country music show said to be the world’s longest continuous radio program--on every Saturday night since 1925--will also become a half-hour show on cable television, Opry official Tom Griscom announced. The Nashville Network, a 2-year-old country music channel that beams programs to 20.6 million households, plans to start running the Opry with a one-hour debut on April 13.

--The Rev. John Fellers said nothing in his training as a minister had prepared him to deal with the woman he found praying in the sanctuary of his First Methodist Church in Shreveport, La., last week. Fellers said he was so shocked to see an unidentified nude woman that he did not have much to say. Finally, “I told her, ‘Lady, if you’re going to pray in here, you’re going to have to put some clothes on,”’ the minister said. She replied, “Mister, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I didn’t want anything between me and the Lord.” Fellers commented: “Strange things happen in the ministries, but they don’t prepare you for this.” After the encounter before the altar, the woman dressed promptly and left, Fellers said.