The ceremony.
Imagine you’ve planned your wedding for this Saturday in the state capitol, but the hundreds of people who work in and around the capitol on weekdays you expected to be gone are still here — because the legislature is still in session today.
That’s the situation Laura Kingery and Fred Lucas of Ankeny faced when they woke up this morning.
“I just think it’s a beautiful building and we didn’t really want a big wedding or anything, so I thought this was a good venue that was still pretty, but not expensive,” Laura told Radio Iowa.
Laura Kingery, who is will go by the name Laura Lucas after her 11 a.m. wedding, once worked as an intern for Democrats in the Iowa Senate. She said her parents “caught some flak on the elevator” from a lobbyist who was aghast a wedding would be happening in the building today. Mother-of-the-bride Anna Kingery was responsible for filling out the paperwork
“I made all the arrangements, have the (memorandum of understanding) with the capitol and have all that, so it’s their fault they’re here,” she said about 45 minutes before the ceremony began.
Laura Kingery and Fred Lucas.
The bride and groom laughed about having all the lobbyists peering over the balcony to the first floor rotunda below as they took some pre-ceremony photos. As for having all those legislators in the building, the couple is taking it in stride.
“We were going to pull them all down, one at a time, and take a photo with them, and then send them back up,” Fred Lucas said, laughing, “but we didn’t want to be too much of a bother.”
Weddings are allowed in the state capitol, but the rules couples agree to make it clear it’s a public building and the space must be shared with others. This couple just didn’t count on sharing it with elected officials on a Saturday.