Bride’s Train Takes the Cake--at 400 Feet

How can you make your wedding special if you don’t have the fortunes of a queen?

One way would be to set a world record with the longest wedding train.

That’s the approach adopted by Ann Boehlke of Venice, who married fellow Venetian Mack Polhemus last weekend in the Marin County community of Bolinas.

Boehlke, 30, walked across an open field to the outdoor ceremony trailed by a train measuring 400 feet, 11 inches, and capped by a headdress reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland.

A singer and actress who works as a television producer’s assistant, Boehlke said she planned for months her “sizable defeat” of the 172-foot record now listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. In lieu of wedding presents, she asked each of the 150 wedding guests to send a 2-by-2-foot piece of cloth “decorated in your own style to help me in setting the world record for the longest wedding train.”

About 75 of the guests were assigned train-carrying duty for the ceremony. “It was so fun because they all got to participate,” Boehlke said.

The caboose on the train, and perhaps one of the strangest contributions, was a three-dimensional wooden Ferris wheel about two feet high.

Polhemus, 28, said the train postponed the marital kiss a little longer than he would have liked: “I had to wait a really, really long time for her to get there because of the train. I almost fainted.”