‘Till Death Do Us Part’ : Couples Lay to Rest Qualms Over Getting Married at a Cemetery

Joanne Corker’s four-month quest for the perfect wedding spot took her from a glass chapel on the Palos Verdes Peninsula to an old mansion set among orange groves in Loma Linda.

It finally ended in June when she and her fiance were married in a hilltop chapel at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, one of Southern California’s largest cemeteries, where about 300,000 people are buried.

Since 1929, more than 35,000 couples have exchanged vows at this cemetery. Shaded by oak and pine trees, and landscaped with fountains, fragrant flowers and life-sized sculptures, the grounds offer a beautiful, if incongruous, setting for a marriage ceremony.

Goal of Spiritual Haven

Despite the credo of founder Hubert Eaton that Forest Lawn should be a spiritual haven for the living, the neat rows of memorial tablets marking graves are a constant reminder that it is primarily a place for the dead.

And, in the mind of Richard Cunningham, executive vice president for rival Pierce Brothers, Cunningham and O’Connor Mortuaries of Los Angeles, a place for the dead is no place to recite wedding vows. “I’ve been in this business 40 years and if I were going to get married, I damn sure wouldn’t want to do it in a cemetery.”

While such sentiments are common, Forest Lawn’s sublime setting frequently wins couples over. “A place of endings and a place for beginnings,” said Sue Moungey, who was married at Forest Lawn on Aug. 6.

Two of the cemetery’s chapels--the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather and the Church of the Recessional--are so popular that weekends are generally booked six months in advance. Twenty-six weddings were held in June and July alone, about half at the Wee Kirk, a replica of a small 14th-Century Scottish church.

Over the years, the quaint chapel has drawn the rich and famous. Perhaps the best-known couple to wed there were Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, married Jan. 26, 1940.

“In the ‘40s, if a couple wasn’t married in the Wee Kirk, they just weren’t married,” said Forest Lawn’s wedding coordinator, Mildred Broking. “It was the elite place to be married.”

During her search for the perfect location, Corker, 32, visited two dozen restaurants, historic houses, inns and gardens. None seemed quite right. Then a parent at the La Crescenta school where she teaches fourth grade suggested that she look at Forest Lawn.

“I had a very negative reaction,” Corker recalled. “But my (fiance) was always saying we must explore all the options.”

So she agreed to take a look. “We were driving through the gates, and I’m sitting in the car with my arms folded, saying, ‘I don’t want to get married in a cemetery,’ ” Corker said. “Then we went ‘round the bend and saw the Wee Kirk. . . . I said, ‘Oh, Rodney, this is absolutely gorgeous. This is the one.’ I must admit I was out of the car before he was.

“It was romantic and secluded. It had stone walls, that Old World air. It was very, very quiet,” Corker said.

The 60-year-old church is a reproduction of the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather near Glencairn, Scotland, where a young woman named Annie Laurie, celebrated in a poem by Robert Burns, once worshiped. Eight stained-glass windows along the south side of the chapel tell the bittersweet story of Annie’s love for Douglas of Fingland, a rival clansman whom her father forbade her to marry.

Forest Lawn also holds weddings at its parks in Hollywood Hills, Cypress and Covina. But the Glendale site--where celebrities such as Mary Pickford, W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy are buried--is the most popular, Broking said.

‘Just Wasn’t Appropriate’

Other large cemeteries in Los Angeles County used to permit weddings but over the years suspended the practice.

“It just wasn’t appropriate to celebrate a very happy time in people’s lives when there are people here mourning the loss of loved ones,” said Dessie Maze, a spokeswoman for Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier. “We just felt that the two did not go hand in hand.”

Although Forest Lawn never schedules funerals at the same time as weddings, those attending weddings occasionally encounter mourners on their knees tidying grave sites or placing flowers.

Wedding guests enter through wrought-iron gates, passing a sign that says: “Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Undertaking, Cemetery, Crematory, Mausoleum, Flower Shop. One call makes all arrangements.”

As Forest Lawn’s wedding coordinator, a position she has held for 10 years, Broking manages a staff of four attendants. She affectionately refers to brides-to-be as “my girls.”

Weddings, which now cost about $165 but will soon increase in price, include singing canaries and a shower of rose petals that drift down from a bell above the altar as the bride and groom exchange their first kiss as husband and wife. Organ music and flowers are extra.

Forest Lawn was acquired in 1917 by Eaton, a cemetery executive. “He wanted it to be a place for the living, where people could come and enjoy life,” Broking said. “That is why there is so much artwork, why there is so much to see and do here. But there are people who will never, never accept that.”