A Very, Very Fishy Wedding : Lifestyle: Couple celebrate underwater nuptials in the tank of an aquarium where they met two years ago.

The bride wore white fins and carried a bouquet of lettuce and broccoli. She swam past the barracuda and angelfish and joined the groom and minister in the giant fish tank at the National Aquarium here.

The bride and groom, Abbe Click and John Harman, became the first people married underwater at the aquarium--and the last, say aquarium officials. Click and Harman took the plunge Friday night.

Aquarium officials agreed to an underwater wedding this one time, says Amy Woodworth, the public relations coordinator, because the couple met at the aquarium two years ago. They were volunteer divers, feeding the fish and maintaining the exhibits.

The aquarium normally prohibits underwater events. It turned down a request two years ago by “Late Night with David Letterman” to broadcast a show with Letterman and his guests in the tank, Woodworth says.

Click, 27, and Harman, 25, have loved the ocean since childhood. People who know them say their getting married among fish and seaweed is appropriate.

“When you think about it,” says Harriet Click, the bride’s mother, “this is the way it should be.”

Maryland natives Click and Harman live in Florida, where Harman teaches scuba diving and is working on a college degree in recreational-diving management. Click is a first-grade teacher.

They plan to return to Maryland, and diving at the aquarium, after Harman graduates next spring.

The couple invited about 250 guests. Guests began arriving about 8 p.m. and toured the aquarium, ending up at the Atlantic coral reef exhibit at 9 p.m. They watched through the glass as the 850 or so fish swim by.

Shortly after 9 p.m. the best man, Matt Partovia, and the Presbyterian minister, Samuel McCoy, and the groom climbed into the water and swam to one end of the 335,000-gallon tank. Partovia and McCoy are also volunteer divers at the aquarium.

Partovia carried the rings in a clamshell.

The three men wore black and gray wet suits, black fins, a mask and an air tank. Harman and the best man also wore black bow ties. The minister wore a clerical collar.

Then the maid of honor, Diane Harman, the groom’s sister, who is also a diver, descended the ladder and entered the tank. She wore pink fins, pink wet suit and pink mask.

As she swam around the tank she squirted brine shrimp (fish food) out of a squeeze bottle. This assured an attending procession for the bride. The damselfish, triggerfish and sergeant majors, especially, love brine shrimp.

As Click, the bride, entered the tank, the “Wedding March” played over the aquarium’s loudspeakers. She swam around the tank, past the feasting fish, to her place next to Harman.

She was dressed in white--white mask, white fins and mostly white wet suit. She wore a short, white veil, which her mother made out of netting and lace.

Her mother thoughtfully sewed in lead sinkers, so the veil wouldn’t float up like a sail.

McCoy, the minister, had a microphone in his mask, so the guests outside the tank could hear him. Click and Harman responded to the vows by holding up slates that said “I will.”

After the ceremony, the bride left her lettuce and broccoli for the fish to eat.

Friday, after McCoy pronounced Harman and Click husband and wife, the wedding party surfaced. Instead of throwing rice into the tank, the guests threw krill, the fishes’ favorite food.

And so it went. The couple eventually climbed out of the tank and greeted everyone in their wet suits.

Then they went home. They needed their rest. They got married again the next day at a church in Frederick, the same church where Click’s parents were married 28 years ago.

They fudge a little on which wedding was the legal one, although when one was underwater and the other in a Catholic church, one can make a pretty good guess. Harman says this: “They both kind of count.”

After the church wedding there was a reception at the Holiday Inn in Frederick. It was above water, but the centerpiece at the head table was a treasure chest.

There were fish bowls containing goldfish at each table. There were fish crackers and coral arrangements and fish balloons. Atop the cake were two dolphins dressed like a bride and groom.

And there was a buffet with plenty of food, including crab puffs and salmon--if, by that point, anyone still had a hankering for fish.