Wedding? Just Get Me to the Surf on Time

Israel Paskowitz, 24, got to the altar Saturday morning, but in circumstances straight out of movies such as “Gidget Goes to the Altar” or “Beach Blanket Bridegroom.”

The plot’s like this: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy proposes to girl. Girl accepts. Girl plans wedding--on a day that boy has a surfing competition in San Clemente.

“I had nothing to do with nothing,” said Paskowitz of Capistrano Beach, who happens to be the world’s No. 1-rated long-board rider. “I knew nothing about the schedule. I entered this long-board thing and ended up right behind first place.” He paused, flicking his wet, shoulder-length hair out of his face. “And I didn’t want to lose all those points.”

What’s a guy to do, especially one who says he’s spent his life on a board? Surf, of course, then get married.

“I would have been very disappointed if he would have gotten married instead of going surfing,” said his father Dorian Paskowitz, who spent the last 30 years driving his wife and nine children around the world, from wave to wave. “You can always get married.”

So Paskowitz was at the San Clemente Pier 15 minutes before his 7 a.m. heat in the Border Line/Professional Surfing Assn. of America tournament--less than three hours before his 9:30 a.m. wedding at St. Edward Catholic church in nearby Dana Point.

Five miles away, at her parents’ Capistrano Beach home, Danielle Brawner, 21, was slipping into the floor-length wedding dress her mother had worn 26 years earlier. As her sister, the maid-of-honor, fastened the embroidered white gown’s score of tiny buttons, Brawner tried to explain her fiance’s idiosyncrasies.

“At first I was skeptical,” Brawner said. “I was scared about the time. But it’s at 7. Besides, it’s classic that he did that. It’s great.”

One has no choice but to believe a woman whose ring bearer wore spanking white Van’s tennis shoes with his tiny white tuxedo, a woman whose guest list read like a Who’s Who of surfing, who planned to dance to the strains of “Endless Summer” once her husband-to-be dried off.

And dry off he finally did. After executing two flawless 360-degree turns with his fiberglass board in the gentle surf, Paskowitz raced out of the chilly water and into the arms of his tuxedo-clad best man and ushers, who tramped through the sand in their patent leather shoes to congratulate him and push him toward the altar.

“It was good,” Paskowitz said of his prenuptial surfing, which landed him in first place in this first elimination round of the continuing competition. “I got to clear my head, see if I have any second thoughts. And I’m really going through with this.”

And the honeymoon plans?

“Puerta Vallarta,” he said. “Monday, after the contest ends. And I’m bringing my surfboard.”