The bride and vroom

By Patrick Maloney, Sun Media

LONDON, Ont. - A London women will alter life at the alter when she opens Canada's first drive-through wedding window.

"Obviously, this is going to be a novelty," Dale Brewster, an entrepreneur whose Crystal Wedding Chapel has brought the $99 shotgun wedding to London.

She said she got the idea when she married in Las Vegas 10 years ago. "The one in Las Vegas is very popular. (People) want to do something different, that's the biggest thing. Why get married conventionally?"

The Crystal Wedding Chapel opened last fall and does about 20 weddings a month. But Brewster expects business to pick up, thanks to the drive-through and, well other high-profile changes to the Canadian marriage system.

Brewster, like others in the wedding business, is getting no shortage of calls from same-sex couples.

"I don't care if they are gay or straight, brides want to walk down the aisle," she said. This is a privately run wedding chapel. I'm not doing this for the good of my health here. I've got to make a living (and) everybody's money is the same colour.

Getting married at the window facing her chapel's parking lot will cost $169.

Copyright © Sun Media 2003