You May Buss the Bride

The bride stepped through the back exit and walked up the passenger aisle. The groom waited nervously in front of the fare box. The court commissioner officiating over it all stood next to the driver’s seat.

The wedding vows exchanged Monday between Wendy Kerek and Victor Mironas aboard an MTA bus in Pasadena certainly got their marriage moving in the right direction.

Mironas is a bus driver who met Kerek when she was a passenger boarding his No. 160 bus at Victory and Laurel Canyon boulevards in North Hollywood six years ago. She is an English-born professional nanny who was on her way home from her hairdresser’s at the time.

It was love by the first stoplight.

“Somebody else on the bus was bothering me, and he told them to leave me alone,” remembered Kerek, 54. “I thought he was kind of cute.”

Recalled Mironas, also 54: “She was a very poised lady, very sweet. She was only going two more stops, so I drove that bus as slowly as I could. When she got off I gave her a card with my phone number on it.”

Two weeks later, they had their first date. This leap year’s day, the passenger popped the question. And the driver said no transfer would be necessary.

The idea for a bus wedding came after Mironas--divorced 26 years ago--had difficulty lining up a Catholic church for the rites.

“He had to talk me into it,” acknowledged Kerek, the mother of three grown children. “At first I wasn’t really looking for anything like this. But later I thought the bus might be kind of fun.”

The train to Kerek’s wedding gown swept the bus floor as she climbed aboard to the recorded strains of “Here Comes the Bride.”

Her family and friends sat on the left side of the 47-seat coach, while Mironas’ occupied the right.

“Victor’s an excellent man. An excellent driver too,” said his new son-in-law, Shawn Kerek, a 30-year-old highway construction worker from Fayetteville, N.C.

“Let’s get this bus going. I’m late for a wedding,” joked Parker Cole of Montrose, a guest sitting in the rear row.

As the idling diesel engine rumbled, Commissioner Dona Bracke of the Glendale Municipal Court conducted the ceremony. To the relief of all, no one on the bus yanked the “stop” cord.

Mironas, an Australian-born former U.S. Marine medic who won a Purple Heart in Vietnam, drove his bride around the Rose Bowl before coming to a stop at the Brookside Country Club. Guests were invited to a luncheon reception there.

“It was a very smooth ride,” said the bride as the groom escorted her off the bus.

But on the Tujunga couple’s honeymoon trip, she added, “somebody else will be doing the driving.”