"Most people in our culture, then, enter engagement and marriage with their full share of irrational ideas and neurotic behavior. They are relatively blind to both their own and their mate's disturbances. When they finally see these neurotic manifestations, they stubbornly refuse to accept them. Instead, they blame the other for being trouble and pity themselves for having to live with such a troubled person." -- from Creative Marriage, by Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper

When you get right down to it, what are the odds?

The odds that two tiny threads making their way through the universe would ever find one another? And then -- and then -- would adhere, would come together to make a seam bound for glory?

Not all the master computers and their slavish attendants could do the Vegas math needed to come up with these odds.

Yet the Wedding Lotto goes on day by day and today Jeff and Natasha are buying their tickets. At the French Quarter Wedding Chapel, the Rev. Anthony Talavera officiating.

It is open to the world, its tall doors pinned open by long Carnival beads and light popping out onto a dark section of a dark street, Burgundy at Conti. It looks determinedly cheerful. There might as well be a sign above the entrance, a flip side to Dante: resume hope, all ye who enter here.

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New Orleans -- The young Wyoming couple opted out of the voodoo wedding, the cemetery wedding and the Bourbon Street balcony wedding, where they'd have to step past a daiquiri machine to climb the stairs. They chose something more traditional: the by-the-banks-of-Big-Muddy wedding. At midnight.

"You're the preacher?" the groom's stepfather asked as the Rev. Tony Talavera rolled up to a gazebo on the edge of the French Quarter in a three-wheeled scooter, honking a tricycle horn to announce his arrival.

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Also reprinted at Houston Chronical Sunday Edition

Just above a Bourbon Street souvenir shop, across the street from a nightspot blasting bass-heavy hip hop, Kate Trott and Barry Burns look into each other's eyes and pledge their everlasting love.

Family members crowded onto the second floor balcony clap and cheer when the Rev. Anthony Talavera pronounces the Arizona couple husband and wife. In the Saturday night din below, a few tourists crane their necks up at the balcony, to the place a sign has proclaimed Weddings-A-Go-Go.

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Author: Melissa Fertitta

What the proverbial “they” are referring to is purely occupational. Talavera is the director of the French Quarter Wedding Chapel and Bourbon Street’s Weddings-A-Go-Go.

An officiate of the California-based Universal Life Church, Talavera has performed thousands of weddings and recently breached the separation of church and state by championing a bit of legislation known as the “Quickie Weddings”.