"It was even better than we expected," said bride Alexis Webb of the couple's last minute venue change
Robert Maharry
NEED TO KNOW
- An Iowa couple’s plans for a courthouse wedding got derailed, so they opted for the next best venue: a funeral home
- Rean and Alexis Webb were officially husband and wife, just half an hour after funeral home director Jody Anderson agreed to marry them
- “It goes back to my career as a funeral director … I mean, you don’t say no. You help people,” Anderson told KCCI
After experiencing a small hitch in getting hitched, an Iowa couple opted for an unlikely venue for their wedding: a local funeral home.
Rean and Alexis Webb were all ready to tie the knot. The couple from Marshalltown, about 50 miles northeast of Des Moines, had their "very small and low-key" nuptials planned for Feb. 12 at the county's courthouse, and even snapped a photo there with their children to commemorate the wedding, per KCCI and Times Republican. But when the judge marrying them failed to show, the couple had to rethink their options.
Unfortunately, no other judges were available to act as a last-minute substitute, but luckily, Alexis's quick-thinking father Tim Schneider had an idea for a possible officiant.
"My dad instantly jumped up, and he was like, 'I know somebody: Jody,'" Alexis told KCCI. In that moment, Schneider later told Times Republican, he thought, "We can make this happen."
He was referring to Jody Anderson, owner of Anderson Funeral Homes — who's also an ordained minister. Within minutes, the wedding couple and guests had moved to the funeral home's chapel — and while Anderson "didn't know what [he] was getting himself into," he went ahead and helped the happy couple get hitched.
Anderson told Times Republican he met with the couple briefly before the ceremony, "just to discuss the importance of marriage." Then, just half an hour after the first call to Anderson, the funeral home owner was marrying Alexis and Rean.
"It goes back to my career as a funeral director. The phone rings? I go. I mean, you don’t say no. You help people," Anderson told KCCI. "I think that’s what the good Lord put me on the Earth to do, is to help people, and I was just happy to help."
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KCCI/YouTube
Alexis told the outlet that her wedding to Rean was even more special and meaningful than she had anticipated. She and her new husband have four children between them, all of whom got to have special roles in their spontaneous wedding ceremony, she said.
"It was even better than we expected because we kind of did get a real wedding in a sense," Alexis said. "We’re in a chapel. I got to walk down the aisle with my dad. The girls got to be flower girls. My son got to be the ring bearer, and his son got to be his best man. I mean, what more could we ask for?"
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