Tying The Knot At The ETH Theatre –

Sandy Hook Couple Upstages ‘The Runaway Bride’

By Shannon Hicks

Moviegoers who went to the early show at Edmond Town Hall theatre on November 6 discovered at 7 pm they were in for more than just a screening of the romantic comedy The Runaway Bride.

The audience at 45 Main Street that night was also treated to the wedding of Sandy Hook residents Christine Jawoisz Harpell and John Thomas Wheway. The ceremony was performed on the town hall’s stage before a collective of invited friends and family, right along with the ticket-holding strangers who had gone out to see the recent release starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.

“I’ve always wanted to do something different,” Christine said last week. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me ‘You are so weird, but this is so you!’”

“I’ve always been unconventional,” continued the lady who throws her annual Christmas party the weekend after New Year’s. “I’ll never be anything else.”

Christine and John were at the town hall a few months ago, in their seats and getting ready to watch a film. Like most theatres, Edmond Town Hall offers patrons music to listen to while they are waiting for a film to start. A selection of classical music was playing that night, and it triggered something in Christine’s imagination.

“I turned to John and said, ‘This is it! Let’s get married here,’” she said. The couple had been together for 7½ years at that point, and they knew they would be getting married, but the date had not yet been set.

Christine and John knew they wanted to work the wedding around a movie, something with a romantic theme. They approached Tom Mahoney, the building administrator at Edmond Town Hall, with their idea.

Christine and John wanted something with a PG rating, and decided to wait for the arrival of The Runaway Bride. The film was released on July 30, which meant it was due in Newtown sometime this fall. Once Mr Mahoney contacted the couple in late September and told them the film would open at Edmond Town Hall on November 5, Christine and John got to work.

“That set the date,” John said last week. The couple took care of a number of errands last week, including picking up their marriage license, before sitting down to talk about their impending nuptials.

John Wheway and Christine Harpell first met at a concert, but it was a date set up at a bowling alley through one of John’s co-workers that got the ball rolling for the couple. He is an electrical engineer who develops Earth sensors for satellites for Barnes Engineering in Shelton. She runs an architectural design firm, Blue Line Designs, out of an office in their Sandy Hook home.

The wedding ceremony Christine and John planned was simple but fun. David Zitnay was their Justice of the Peace. John had a best man, William Tucker; Christine had a matron of honor, Mary Ann Davis Tucker; and Christine’s niece and goddaughter, Sarah Frances Tusch, was the bridesmaid.

Their invitations were designed to look like oversize movie passes. Guests were invited to “The Wedding,” which the invitation explained would star John T. Wheway and Christine Jawoisz Harpell. The invitations/tickets offered every one of the couple’s 234 invited guests admission to the movie, a large soda, a large popcorn, and a reception that followed at Sandy Hook Firehouse immediately following the screening of The Runaway Bride.

Christine and John had seats set aside for them, which were marked with large stars, Hollywood style. The 500-seat theatre was sold out by show time.

Christine wore an off-white wedding gown and carried the Bible her grandmother held when she was married. John and his best man wore suits, with John accessorizing with his high-top Converse sneakers. (Christine’s mother made her promise to hold off on putting on her own sneakers until at least the reception, to which Christine agreed.)

At their reception, the bride and groom handed out playbills. The booklets were set up just like a theatre playbill, with a listing of Main Characters, Special Dedications, descriptions of each “scene” (“The Entrance,” “The Meeting on the Stage,” “The Vows and Exchange of Rings,” etc), and Special Acknowledgements.

Marcy Becker, who works in Edmond Town Hall’s board of managers office, said this week the wedding Saturday night “went very well, extremely well.”

“Everybody had a great time. I think the audience was greatly surprised,” she continued. “They didn’t know what was going to be happening. But [Christine] came down the aisle with her father and everything. Everyone loved it. They were very clever.”

“The response from people was wonderful,” Christine said this week. “They were caught completely off guard. We had a blast, an absolute blast!

“One mother came up to me, and this was a complete stranger, and said ‘I hope when my daughter gets married she has the guts to do whatever she wants, just like you two,’” Christine continued.

“I thought that was the nicest compliment, because this was exactly what we wanted. It’s hard to be unconventional, and sometimes we hear about it.

“But this was what we both wanted, and it was perfect.”