Zack and Abigail Monte pose in front of the World’s Largest Teapot, where they exchanged their vows before family and friends days before their Girard wedding day to comply with the state law of West Virginia, which had issued their marriage license. Not only did they follow the letter of the law, the Chester couple has an interesting story to tell their future grandchildren. (Special to the Review/Stephanie Ujhelyi)
CHESTER — When a local pair of newlyweds learned days before their wedding that they had overlooked an important part of their premarriage ritual, they decided to get a little creative.
Abigail Murray, daughter of retired Lisbon Highway Patrol Post trooper Craig Monte and his wife Melissa, explained that she and her significant other are big procrastinators. Not only had they put off getting their marriage license, which Murray explained such licenses are issued a month in advance by appointment in Ohio. She and her husband Zack found themselves scrambling last minute to get one in West Virginia, where they reside.
“To be completely honest, we didn’t know they were mandatory,” Murray explained, adding that unlike Ohio’s process, which included completing a bunch of paperwork and supplying an abundance of documents, she reached out to a Hancock County courthouse, where they were able to be squeezed in. “They didn’t need a bunch of fancy paperwork or documents. They just needed to know two things: our names and if we were cousins.”
However, West Virginia only granted the license on one condition: ” We had to be married on West Virginia soil or the marriage would not be legal. We shrugged it off with a ‘sure’ knowing that our wedding was in Girard,” she said.
It wasn’t until later that night that Zack and Abigail’s family and friends learned of the couple’s plight at their rehearsal dinner. “After casually explaining the situation to friends and family, and seeing their jaws drop to the floor in awe of our stupidity and the situation, we made the spontaneous decision to hop in our cars and head to West Virginia’s finest, the Worlds Largest Teapot, ” the bride detailed. “So our officiate, family and friends drove to Chester at 11 pm and I walked down the aisle, repeated our vows and smooched.”
Days later, the Murrays re-enacted their vows at their big Girard wedding venue.
When Chester officials learned of the moonlight events, they thought it was appropriate to invite the Murrays over the World’s Largest Teapot for their annual Teapot Day this past Saturday to memorialize the occasion from weeks before. “As redneck as it was, it was the highlight of our wedding weekend and a story I can’t wait to tell my great grand kids,” Murray concluded. “To my understanding, we are the first couple to ever get married in front of the World’s Largest Teapot. We have officially made history.”
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