RELIGION / JOHN DART : Valley Wedding Director Stands On Ceremony : Organization: Recently named president of L.A. professional group, Nancy Stevens, who works for a Reseda church, says her calling is a ministry.

They take few vacations, rarely have a weekend free and are on the phone frequently with brides-to-be worrying over wedding details. They squelch messy ideas such as releasing pigeons during the wedding vows and rope in aisle-blocking cameramen.

They are church wedding directors. Despite modest fees, they enjoy the work so much that many have done it for a couple of decades.

Nancy Stevens has missed only two weddings at Reseda United Methodist Church since she began coordinating nuptials in 1966.

“You do it not to earn a living but for other reasons,” Stevens said. “It’s a ministry.”

But though many see the job as a calling, it can be very trying. In 1991, several directors formed an interdenominational association in Los Angeles to compare pay scales, provide mutual support, establish ethics and standards and exchange “war stories” about nuptials gone awry.

Stevens was installed earlier this month as president. More than 100 women from Protestant and Catholic churches now belong to the group, the founding chapter of the American Assn. of Wedding Directors.

“I’m in contact with a church in Chicago where a similar group is meeting,” Stevens said. The Catholic Office of Family Life has explored forming a group of parish wedding directors in the Los Angeles archdiocese.

Stevens and her predecessor, Lori Jones of Burbank, a longtime wedding director at Wilshire United Methodist Church, say the group is not trying to start a union, but a professional group akin to the organists guild.

Wes Velkov, newsletter editor for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Guild of Organists, said he understands the impulse. Organists have enough headaches: soloists who shouldn’t be soloing, pleas to play music unsuited for the organ, justifying their fees. Wedding directors have even more.

“That is an awful job,” he said.

“You have no idea how difficult brides can be.”

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Early in the group’s existence, Jones said, a church wedding director “was fired for trumped-up reasons because the minister’s wife wanted to do the weddings.” The group considered lodging a protest, but decided that it was too new then to be effective.

And, according to Stevens, church weddings have become much more elaborate over the last 15 years.

“Gone are the days when a young woman of 18 or 20 comes with a request for a small wedding with a family friend as a photographer and a reception nearby,” Stevens said.

Today’s bride is more than 25 or 30 years old, and she often comes with a package of vendors--video cameramen, photographers, florists, limousine lessors and sometimes hired wedding coordinators, she said.

Wedding planners also struggle with ethical dilemmas: Pay is fairly low, for example, and the temptation exists for church wedding directors to take kickbacks from vendors. Stevens and Jones said the church wedding directors group is against the practice.

“I’ve had photographers say, ‘There will be $100 every time you refer a wedding to me,” said Stevens. “It is inappropriate for a member of a church staff to take a kickback or a gratuity.”

Church wedding directors are underpaid, Jones said.

She said a survey of members found that one gets as low as $40 a wedding and another receives $300 a wedding. “Most get between $100 and $150,” she said.

Selma Civiletti of Agoura Hills, who directs weddings at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Westwood Village, estimated that she spends seven hours in conferences, rehearsal and the wedding itself. “I meet with the bride maybe once, but I talk at least 20 times on the phone with her,” Civiletti said.

She said she volunteered to fill a wedding director vacancy 26 years ago at the parish after her daughter encountered “a very officious” wedding director at a Beverly Hills church, one who had hinted broadly that some of her brides give her expensive presents.

Although few brides want receptions on church premises today, a church venue for the wedding is still popular.

A well-planned wedding that goes smoothly can have a positive effect on people who have drifted away from parishes, said Mary Anne Cosgrove, who does 50 weddings a year at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church on Los Angeles’ Westside.

Catholic churches once discouraged weddings on Sunday, but she said that policy has changed, partly because hotels and other popular sites for receptions charge so much on Fridays and Saturdays.

Because hotels and restaurants vie for large wedding parties, it has meant some perks for the church wedding directors group, which met this month at the Pavilion Restaurant at the Music Center and has also met at such places as the Bistro Garden in Beverly Hills.

“I have been served the most incredible, decadent meals in my life,” admitted Nancy Stevens. In November, a Holiday Inn in Torrance served the group “four salads, six entrees and four deserts,” she said. “I rolled out of that meeting.”

On June 27, the growing network of directors proved a blessing for Jones. An arsonist struck Wilshire United Methodist Church, burning the sanctuary. Church services were relocated, but with her colleagues’ help, many of her 39 pending weddings were rescheduled at other churches.

The group’s senior member in terms of experience is Juanita

Portlock, who has directed weddings at Los Angeles’ Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church for more than 30 years. Most members work for mainline Protestant churches.

More than anything, Jones said, the task is a ministry that requires a balanced liaison between church and families.

“We try to show them that organized religion is not just a money-grubbing, get-them-in-and-get-them-out business,” she said.

“We want to make the wedding beautiful and meaningful for the couples while assuring that church policies are not violated in ways that the church would be held up to ridicule.”