Some folks’d do most anything to get their names and pictures in the papers, including committing matrimony in some far-fetched surroundings.

Next thing you know we’ll have astronauts tying the knot while zooming through space at a zillion mph and at an altitude of a million or so miles above the earths surface.

We’ve already seen the bungee-jumpers getting married while poised for the lovers leap that hurdles them from skyscraper heights into blissful oblivion.

Later, we may even see the preacher donning his chaps and spurs before uniting a pair of rodeo performers in holy matrimony as, on horseback, the three of them circle madly around the arena at breakneck speed.

Some weddings have taken on a bizarre sort of aura in this mad mad world that needs only a couple of rivets removed before it, like the one-hoss shay, crumbles into the dust from whencestet came.

On Valentines Day seven years ago, some 14 couples alerted the newspapers of their intent to undergo the rigors of commitment one to another publicly at the Montgomery County Courthouse.

The Montgomery Advertiser, WSFA-TV and other media junkies immediately took the bait and made great moment of this obviously preplanned publicity stunt.

Dont know why they havent thought of some such similar performance being staged at the Olympic games.

That would be an obvious setting for world-wide notoriety , particularly if the preacher would perform the ceremony as a pair of sky-jumpers repeated their vows as they flew through the air with the greatest of ease.

It may already have been done, but if not, wouldnt it be simply too thrilling if they staged an underwater marriage joining a pair of scuba divers many fathoms below the surface?

The first recollection I have of any such shenanigans took place in the 1930s in Montgomery when Maurice and Bernice Kriesman got spliced while airborne in a plane owned by Diffly Funeral Home.

That was obviously a publicity stunt, admittedly so, as the funeral directors sought to increase business through the simple expedient of blatant notoriety.

Incidentally, Maurice and Bernice were awarded all sorts of incentives for their participation, including an all-expense paid honeymoon at some swanky resort.

As strange and unconventional as all the above may appear, well accept the lawfully-wedded routes portrayed here, no matter how outr?© and eccentric, in preference to the move-in, live-in cohabitation, sans wedding rites, thats so prevalent in todays society.

I and my mate took the conventional no-fanfare church route to the altar some 51 years ago and it seems to have worked out very well, thank you.