Altar-Natives : During an Old West wedding complete with a shootout, a couple voice plans to ‘canter down the trail of life into green pastures.’

As high noon approached, a crowd of folks in boots, denim and calico strolled around the square. They settled down on fresh hay bales in front of the Old Star Saloon, a few sipping frosty mugs of beer. The setting was the Old West town at Paramount Ranch in Agoura.

Across the street in front of the feed store, a pair of drifters stopped to watch as an eight-man posse in long white dusters rode abreast along the street, then reined up in formation and swung down from their mounts. Among them was Mark Voje of Malibu, in a black hat.

Spurs chinking, the party approached the front of the saloon where Voje took his place alongside a tall circuit rider in frock coat and mission hat--the Rev. John Southwick of Simi Valley.

All faced the road leading out of--or in this case, into--town, and there was a suspenseful pause. Then a red stagecoach pulled by a pair of massive Belgians rounded the corner and delivered Shannon Landvogt of Camarillo with a flourish. She proceeded up an aisle of sorts between the hay bales to join her groom.

They said their vows but not before a bit of drama unfolded.

The preacher asked if anyone could show cause why the couple shouldn’t be “hitched.” Some varmint--apparently a rejected suitor--strode out from a storefront and protested. It was his last move. The entire mob of groomsmen drew .45s and blew him away, to the delight of the guests.

Commenting on the Wild West theme of her wedding, Landvogt, a communications specialist for Micom Communications, said: “We just decided that that was us. We wanted to have something our friends will remember.”

The couple met at the Conejo Valley Days parade in Thousand Oaks last year where they rode in mounted patrols. Voje, a general contractor, is a lieutenant in the Old Agoura Rangers, an equestrian preservation group, and Landvogt is a mounted patrol volunteer for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

In the words of their ceremony, from here they plan to “canter down the trail of life into green pastures.”

There’s a fairy-tale quality to the story of Ed Newport and Linda Grimes.

They chose late March to be married in a hot air balloon and there was a deluge of rain all month. The balloon company they picked couldn’t seem to pin down a takeoff location. Three weeks before the wedding, they had no address to put on their invitations.

They dumped the company and called another with the off-the-wall name of Dreams Unlimited. Naively, they requested a takeoff and landing within a few hundred yards of their guests.

“We told them we couldn’t do that,” said Jill Phillips, who drives Dreams’ recovery truck, sometimes as far as 20 miles from the takeoff. “The winds take you--they seldom turn around and bring you back.”

Unless you are enchanted.

Newport and Grimes both grew up belonging to the Freewill Baptist Church, he in Ventura, she in Visalia. It was a denomination small enough that their families were acquainted--but they themselves didn’t meet until, as Grimes puts it, “we had come to a certain point when we were ready for each other.”

That didn’t happen until each had had a previous marriage. Both took up nursing, and ended up on the same shift at the Kaweah Delta Hospital in Visalia in 1989. They became engaged a year later.

When they were coming down to the wire to secure a takeoff permit for the wedding, Newport decided to ask permission to hold it at his grandparents’ former ranch in Santa Paula. He contacted the new owner, who turned out to be Mark Wintz, a balloon pilot.

“He was thrilled,” Newport said. “He said, ‘As long as I can watch.’ ”

It seems Wintz had put in a lawn and gazebo in the old pasture, and that’s where the guests gathered at 6:30 in the morning. The rain held off that day, in between two days when it poured.

Newport’s uncle, Cecil Spurlock, who grew up on the ranch and became a Baptist minister in Clovis, officiated. And Edith Newport, who sold the ranch after her husband’s death, got to see the whole layout from a balloon.

The wedding party climbed aboard and took off. The bridal pair released two white doves as they drifted up over South Mountain, radioing the ceremony to the ground over walkie-talkies. Then, the pilot hit a wind, boxed around, and landed 50 feet from their starting point. Because he had used so little fuel, he put the balloon on a tether and gave rides to all the guests.

“The mountains were all green and the grass was just perfect,” Newport said. “It just all came together--it was incredible.”

He likes to think that the doves settled down together on the ranch.

On a sunny afternoon in June, 1990, Joan Blankenship and Terry Schmidt of Culver City had a picnic on the picturesque strip of rock where the surf crashes in at Sycamore Cove south of Point Mugu.

It was only their second date, but Joan felt compelled to say to the man she had met a few weeks before when asking directions to Marina del Rey: “If I ever get married again, I want to have the ceremony here.”

Sure enough, on an unseasonably cold, windy May evening less than a year later, the two said their vows on the rock while guests in Windbreakers stood nearby dodging the incoming tide--not entirely successfully.

“We’ve been freezing all day,” said David Serviss, who had arrived from Glendale, Ariz., for the ceremony.

Guests who came early in the afternoon to frolic in the surf had brought a catamaran and windsurfing boards, but they had been beached by the wind. They played volleyball instead. After a picnic of barbecued chicken, baked beans and macaroni salad, some had warmed up in their cars until time for the ceremony.

Then they trooped down the sand to hear a Handel sonata played by an oboist, to join in singing “Amazing Grace” and to get their feet wet.

Schmidt, a carpentry contractor, said he and his bride had had traditional church weddings for their first marriages, and they were sold on being married in a natural setting.

As the sun went down behind Mugu Rock, the groom in shirt sleeves and the bride in goose bumps lit a single tiki torch from two others, in a symbolic union of their love. Then the groom smudged his hands while snuffing out the first two torches. Sometimes true love takes a little discomfort.

So, how would two young urban professional attorneys choose to marry? Answer: In a civil ceremony.

When they took their vows this past April, Philip Bachrach and Deborah Bronner weren’t going in for romantic frills. They were new to L.A.’s Westside, having arrived from Marin County last year--and they had been establishing practices, not making friends. They didn’t know anyone to invite to a wedding. Anyway, they had been together six years, and it was a second marriage for each.

They decided on a ceremony at the Ventura County Hall of Justice followed by a weekend at an oceanside Ventura hotel.

Bronner picked up a new white linen dress. Bachrach made do with a broken-in sport coat. They chose rings, and he bought her a shrimp-colored silk bouquet.

That was it. They drove up to the Saturday morning “open house” held in a courtroom at the Ventura County Government Center. Unlike most courts, here judges volunteer in rotation to marry whoever shows up with a marriage license and $30.

There were 18 couples ahead of Bronner and Bachrach. The two spent an hour and a half holding hands in the courtyard before their names were called. Then, since they had no witnesses with them, a newspaper reporter and photographer found in the lobby were pressed into service.

Municipal Judge Art Gutierrez had the duty that weekend--a task that he happens to enjoy.

“It’s very uplifting,” Gutierrez said after finishing the morning wedding docket. “Ninety-nine percent of my cases are criminal--I’m deciding whether to put people in jail. This is a definite good-mood setter--especially when you get someone as obviously in love as these two.”

In the almost empty courtroom, the five-minute ceremony drew to a close: “. . . to love, honor and to respect; and above all else to be a friend to him, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, so long as you both shall live?”

“I will,” said Bronner, softly. The two exchanged rings and kissed. They were chastised for not waiting to be pronounced husband and wife, and then kissed again.

“I’m excited,” said Bachrach. “I didn’t think I’d be this excited.”

For several minutes they stood grinning at each other. Then the groom paid the judge, and they walked past the rows of vacant seats and out the double doors, still holding hands. There was something romantic about it after all.