A Fast Wedding in Chaplain’s Shop Is Just the Ticket

--Ted Kipperman has combined his talents as a pawnshop owner and American Legion chaplain by opening a wedding chapel in his business. For a fee of $25 to $250, Kipperman will marry a couple in his southeast Houston pawnshop and will even lend them the money for the ceremony, if they have something to pawn. “A little wedding chapel like this is designed for people who don’t have much money and want a fast wedding,” said Kipperman, 56. “I think I could get them in and out of here in 10-15 minutes.” Kipperman said he plans to offer an artificial three-tier wedding cake with which couples may pose for photographs and also will install a refrigerator so he can sell fresh flowers, as well as artificial ones. “I think this chapel will become a tourist attraction,” he said. “The idea of getting married in a pawnshop just tickles me. It’s something different, like getting married on a horse,” said Keith Cummings, 34, who married his bride, Mitzi Kapsi, in the shop.

--”I can’t sleep with both a woman and a tiger,” said Jack Hanna, explaining why he has been staying in the family’s guest room while his wife, Suzi, shares their bed with a month-old white tiger. Hanna, director of the Columbus, Ohio, zoo, said the veterinarian discovered that the back legs of the unnamed kitten were curving outward and in danger of becoming deformed from lying on the slick floor of the tiger den. The cub has moved in for the summer. Suzanne Hanna, 13, said: “We hold her a lot to keep her quiet.”

--Cab driver Ioan Zmeu picked up a British woman and her husband at the New York Hilton in mid-Manhattan last month and was about to take them to Kennedy Airport when they spotted the limousine that originally was supposed to drive them there. When they got out of the cab, the woman, Shirley Tucker, who turned out to be the Manchester, England, lord mayor and magistrate, forgot her purse. Romanian-born Zmeu, 61, later called England to let the owner know that it was safe. “She was very delighted. She didn’t expect to find it,” said daughter-in-law Cristina Zmeu. As a reward, the lord mayor invited the cabbie, his wife, Irina, and Cristina to fly to England as her guests for a four-day visit.