New millennium
moves many to
get married

Young lovers from near and
far are here to seal their romances
as the calendar turns to 2000

By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

DARYL Ross and Erika DeCarlo will be dancing atop Kilauea volcano at midnight.

Martin Feather will be extra busy the next two days releasing monarch butterflies.

And the Rev. "Howie" Welfeld will be equally hectic performing services.

For those in love, and those tending them, this millennium weekend will be extra romantic and extra frantic. Wedding agencies and ministers are booked full.

Welfeld, with Above Heaven's Gate, said he normally limits ceremonies to one a day. But today and tomorrow, he's marrying 12 couples.

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Andrew Norton and Angelita Paragas of Toronto apply for a
marriage license yesterday at the state Department of Health.

"We're going nuts," said Welfeld, who marries local and military couples as well as tourists. "The millennium is a rare and unusual occurrence, once every thousand years. Linking two hearts in matrimony, making a divine commitment, is also something very rare, if done purely."

Couples yesterday were lined up at the state Department of Health for marriage licenses. Employees said this week has been busier than usual, with 206 couples applying the first three days alone. That compares to 193 couples during the first five working days this month, and 186 during a full week in November.

Chicago couple Ross and DeCarlo waited at the office yesterday before flying to the Big Island, where they will get married inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park at the stroke of midnight. A minister helped arrange the ceremony.

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Erika DeCarlo and Daryl Ross, from Illinois, wait to get their license.
They plan to get married on the Big Island "near a volcano."

They met 11 years ago on Jan 1. and decided to start the new millennium with marriage.

"We're going to be dancing on the volcano after we're married," Ross said.

The idea came from "Dance on a Volcano," a song by the group Genesis. "Maybe we'll wear grass skirts if it's not too cold. Maybe even if it is."

BUTTERFLIES will be dancing full time as well. Feather breeds monarchs on Kauai at the firm Butterflies Over Hawaii.

He'll be releasing them at weddings today and tomorrow, with business three times the normal level. Feather doesn't plan to celebrate himself until after New Year's Day.

More Japanese also are getting married this weekend. Sookja Kim, with sales and promotions at Watabe Wedding Corp., said the New Year holiday is normally not a big draw for Japanese couples to tie the knot, but there are more this year because of the millennium.

"Japanese people like numbers," Kim said about their penchant for days with special numbers and meanings. "Mass media tell them to get married on a special day."

Today will be very special for Jennifer Steet and Rick Henderson of Atlantic City, N.J. They're getting married at a park near Diamond Head.

After knowing each other for five years, "We'll spend the last day of the millennium together," Steet said.

"And we'll start a whole new life together."