September 07, 2006|By John Woestendiek | John Woestendiek,Sun Reporter
"I don't now if we can consider [us] as `boyfriend and girlfriend' but I have a very strong feeling for her," he added. "Is a big distance between Russia and Romania." "Autumn leaves, when they fall Whisper to the wind, Ringing out, telling all Of the summer's end. Now you're gone far away, How I long to hear you say `I love you.'" Roy Orbison and Bill Dees, "Summer Love" (1965)
Jennifer and Preston got to Bethany Beach on a Wednesday. They got married the next day.
In a way it wasn't all that spur of the moment. They'd been dating since after high school, living together for years, had a child together and just this year, bought a house.
Still, it was only eight days before they were to leave for their annual family beach vacation, that they decided there would be no better time, or place, to get married.
"We wanted it on the actual beach. It's nice and peaceful and quiet, but because of the time frame we couldn't pull it off," she said.
Instead, Jennifer and Preston Howard, of Norristown, Pa., got married Aug. 17 in Lewes, Del., in the backyard of a friend of Cathleen Logue's, a wedding planner based in Millsboro, Del., who they found through her Web site.
Logue, owner of Weddings By Cathleen, handled all the logistics, officiated and photographed the wedding - probably the quickest one she's ever thrown together.
Many of her weddings, she says, are on the beach, often because that's where a couple's relationship began or where the proposal took place - "especially at sunset," she said. "It's the ocean air. There's something in the ocean air that brings out the romance in everybody.
"The beach just has all the elements - sunrises, sunsets, long walks along the beach in the evening. It all just kind of sparks taking the relationship to the next level."
All proceeds from her business go to her church, the Lighthouse Church of Love and Hope, which has a small congregation and no building. Logue hopes to someday buy a little white chapel.
As for the Howards - Jennifer, 29, works for a medical company, and Preston, 32, is a machine operator - they say the wedding, even though it wasn't on the beach, went off without a hitch. The day after, they took a walk along the seashore.
"It was all absolutely perfect," she said. "We couldn't have asked for anything else." "Who will kiss you, hold you tight Two silver silhouettes In the summer moonlight ... Will you walk along the beach ... Counting stars way out of reach ... Will you tell your heart, beware This is just a summer affair Or will you fall in love for keeps Like I did last summer." Andy Williams, "Summer Love" (1960)
Bob and Vivian were kindred spirits who had never met, even though they worked for the same big outfit, the Central Intelligence Agency.
When another employee told Bob about a group beach house that Vivian organized, he went to Dewey Beach with a friend to check it out, and decided to get in on the deal.
At the beginning of the summer, Vivian, an operations officer, was dating a member of the Air Force, and Bob, in clandestine services, was busy "checking out the other girls in the house." Up to 30 people could be there on a busy weekend, sometimes resorting to sleeping in closets and the bathtub.
By the Fourth of July, Bob and Vivian had become good friends, and that weekend, while working together putting on a pig roast, they shared their first kiss. It was on the beach.
Not long after that, on their way home from a party, they stopped and sat on the beach and shared more, realizing that, in addition to all else they had in common - both being Democrats, both being against the war - they had strong feelings for each other.
That 2 a.m. rendezvous would be followed by many more. They'd grab a blanket, leave the zaniness of the house and head for the beach. Conversation came easy. Sometimes they spent the entire night there.
"There's nothing more beautiful than the sunrise over the ocean," Vivian says.
"The beach is very conducive to romance," Bob says, pulling a photo of Vivian out of his wallet, taken in one of those boardwalk photo booths that spits out a series of tiny prints.
Was it a summer fling, destined to be as fleeting as the season? Was it love, or just the magic of a moonlit beach, salty air, soothing surf and caressing breeze, all further fueled by a few drinks? Not even they knew for sure at the time.
They do now.
"It hasn't been fleeting for me; it will be 40 years come December," Vivian said.
The war the Barrys were against was in Vietnam; the year they first kissed was 1964. Two years later, they got married. In 1985, they returned to Dewey Beach and opened a bed and breakfast called Barry's Gull Cottage. Several marriage proposals have been made in the hot tub there, Vivian says, and some of those couples now come back with their children.
