Bride and grooms choose Tombstone for love and laughter

It takes a certain type of person to get married in Tombstone.

In order to do so, one must have a laid-back, anything-goes approach to their big day, but most importantly, a sense of humor.

Five years ago Mike and Sharon McGee had the time of their lives at their friends' wedding in Tombstone.

"It was one of the most fun weddings we've ever been to," Sharon said. "You could get married for free if you'd let them (the actors) play with you."

She said the local actors participated in friends Chris and Dan McDonald's wedding as if it were a play for a regular tourist audience.

"There were characters in there playing games, messing with the bride and groom," Mike said. "They arrested Dan for cheating on his wife with a whore and then stiffing her for money - they even threw him in jail."

The Saturday wedding was out of the ordinary for those attending, but the passersby had no idea what was going on.

"Tourists were in and out of there; some would sit and watch for a bit then walk on back out," Sharon said of the service performed at Big Nose Kate's Saloon.

"They didn't realize it was a real wedding."

The wedding party rode into town on motorcycles and the bridesmaids wore colorful corsets to match bride Chris' white one.

They decided to buy their own saloon-type clothes, but there are alternative ways of dressing and planning for a wedding.

Anyone can stop by 10th and Allen streets to get a cold beer at Crazy Annie's Bordello Bed & Breakfast and Saloon, stay in one of its four guest rooms, or get married in an 1880s style shotgun wedding.

Like the McDonalds' ceremony years ago, the weddings at Crazy Annie's are performed as comical skits.

"The bride and groom usually don't know much about what's going on," Crazy Annie's owner Carol Ann Pauli said of the weddings. "I have my own actors come in and mess with the bride and groom, or I'll interrupt the service and say
something to the groom like, 'Hey, this is a Bordello, she's working for me!' It's a lot of fun."

There are many factors that make a wedding in Tombstone different than the ordinary. Pauli said most of the knots tied in town are between couples that are second or third-timers.

"They want something different," Pauli said. "They want something to remember that's not run-of-the-mill. And they're usually 35 and older, most of them have kids grown. You know a little bit more about what you're getting yourself into, or you should."

Pauli — also known as "Crazy Annie" because of her middle name — said a wedding would cost anywhere between $300 and $500 for the cake, minister, flowers, and decorations.

Outfits are the only things not covered by her services, but there are other outlets in town that fulfill that need.

Pauli sends her wedding clients in need of outfits down the road to Trashy Trish's or Sadie Jo's Tombstone Wedding Photography and Costume Rentals.

Sadie Jo's owner Jo Bannister sometimes collaborates with Pauli by taking pictures of and dressing the wedding parties.

Bannister and business partner Morningstar Queen are in the process of merging their services to host weddings, birthdays and other special events. Together, they will be able to coordinate the events, plan for proper arrangements, officiate at weddings and take photos of the events.

Queen's favorite parts about planning the big events are meeting people from all over the world and dressing their wedding parties.

"We've had people from Germany, Canada, Australia — all over. Tombstone seems to be the destination choice," Queen said. "It's a lot of fun, and most of them want to dress in period clothing because it's such a unique place in western history."

The saloon wedding is the most popular, Bannister said, in which the women dress like "floosies."

Bannister dedicated her entire basement to western attire for such events — it's full of gowns, boots, shoes, jewelry, gloves, hats and the like. And her back yard is full of props and scenes from Sadie Jo's Photo Studio, which closed a year ago. It includes a saloon, bordello, gallows, jail, camp and bathhouse.

"Most of the women in the wedding parties that I deal with want to dress
up like saloon girls," Bannister said. "So I 'floozy' it up for them. Everyone has a lot of fun."

The fun is said to be inevitable, but everyone has his or her favorite part.

"My favorite part is at the end of the day when everything goes OK," Pauli said.

"Especially when you can see that they're really happy."

A well-planned and fun ceremony isn't always the most important aspect for
the weddings in Tombstone — sometimes it's speed.

"The fastest wedding I've planned was seven years ago for our first wedding here at Crazy Annie's," Pauli said. "From the point they walked in here asking to get hitched to the time they were married, it took 45 minutes."