The wedding of Tamara Woodchek had all the glitz and glam of a Hollywood red-carpet event. In 2001, she and her husband tied the knot in a movie-themed wedding at the historic Lakewood Theater, where they celebrated their first Valentine’s Day together. “When we got engaged, we knew we weren’t going to get married in a church,” she says. “I love musicals and old movies. We thought we’d check it out, and we had our ceremony and reception there.”
Guests arrived with their tickets on a red carpet, where the bride’s sister interviewed them as they passed movie posters of the couple hanging in the windows. The interviews were streamed on the movie screen as guests found their seats in the theater, where every other row was covered with a long table.
The ceremony started with a short movie that introduced the wedding party, who walked down the aisle as an onstage band performed songs from movies. Woodchek entered to the wedding march from “The Sound of Music.”
“I had a hard time finding a dress,” Woodchek says. “I thought about a red ‘Gone with the Wind’ dress, but I couldn’t go through with it.”
The reception was complete with cakes that looked like film reels.
Today, the couple lives near White Rock Lake and has a painting of the theater in their home. When the seats were removed from the theater in 2015 to abate asbestos, the pair grabbed two that they plan to restore and keep as a memento from their special day.
“It’s nice to have something nearby to remember that experience,” Woodchek says. “A lot of people tell me it’s one of the funnest weddings they’ve ever been to. It’s something different they hadn’t done before.”
