super-size me...for the rest of our lives

netscape.com

We can just imagine the invitation to the wedding of Lori Sherbondy and Ken Sinchar: The pleasure of your company is requested at the McDonald's drive-thru. Yes, these crazy kids got married on Monday night in the same place they met four years ago--she behind the window at the McDonald's drive-thru in the Norwin Towne Shopping Center in Irwin, Pa., and he in his white minivan with the window rolled down.

Ah, romance. It makes you do nutty things. Like think McD's is just as good as a church or synagogue. The Associated Press reports that the two grabbed hands through their respective windows while a district judge helped them recite their vows and then pronounced them man and wife. And, no, just for the record, they don't want fries with their vows. (The couple admit they have had to endure every fast food joke known to mankind.)

Lori and Ken met one fine day in 2001 when he stopped for lunch at the McDonald's drive-thru, something he rarely did. "I didn't used to go for fast food, but I looked at that woman in the window, and wow! I came back every lunchtime after that," the happy groom, a 38-year-old floor installer, told AP. Each day he hoped to see "that blue-eyed brunette named Lori." The blushing bride, 42, gushed to AP, "He's the only man I ever flirted with. It got to where everyone in the store knew when it was 12:15, when my Hamburger Happy Meal Man was coming through."

While Lori and Ken probably won't spark a rash of weddings at McDonald's drive-thrus nationwide, the reality is that as the cost of a traditional wedding skyrockets, more brides and grooms are opting for cheaper ceremonies in offbeat locations or opting to just live together and skip the ceremony altogether. That's the word from a University of Michigan researcher who says that with the average cost of a traditional wedding approaching $20,000 (or more depending on where you live), a lack of money rather than love or commitment may be the reason so many young couples are living together instead of getting married.

Tradition has been burned by the almighty dollar. "Financial barriers to marriage are a significant issue for many young, working- and middle-class couples as well as for the poor and near-poor," Pamela Smock, sociologist and the associate director of the U-M Institute for Social Research, said in a news release. "Despite the retreat from marriage, it remains a highly valued status." It's just not easily attainable.