Getting in on a royal anniversary

Not everyone in Los Angeles County will be tuned in to Friday’s Royal Wedding, compelling though the nuptials of Prince William and his bride, Kate Middleton, may be.

At least 133 local couples will probably be too busy on April 29 to check out what’s happening in Great Britain—because they’ll be having their own weddings that day.

“We had no idea when we scheduled that we’d be getting married on the day of the royal wedding, but we’re happy to be having a dignified day,” laughed Shammeer Dawson, a 26-year-old USC graduate student from Gardena who will be marrying her 27-year-old fiancé, Trayshard Sorrell, at a Los Angeles County complex in Norwalk this week.

According to Portia Sanders, division manager at the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office there, the number of ceremonies scheduled for that date at county offices has shot up this year. Only 49 ceremonies were performed last April 29, she said, and only 104 were performed the next day, which, as in this year, was the last Friday in April.

Wedding fever?

Probably not, Sanders says.

“We’ve seen an increase in marriages over last year in general,” she says. “Some of it is service men and women being deployed. Some of it is the economy, people who were living together getting married now for the benefits. Some of it is just because it’s a Friday and it’s easier for people to fit into their schedules.

“What can I say?” she says, laughing. “There’s always love there, but not always romance.”

In fact, Dawson says, the couple’s first choice had been April 30, the anniversary of their first official date as a couple—dinner at P.F. Chang’s after a concert to benefit victims of the Haitian earthquake—but it fell on a Saturday. “So we chose the closest date.”

Acquainted since 2007, when they met as coworkers at an Enterprise Rent-A-Car office, they remained friends while Dawson went back to school to earn a master’s degree in social work and Sorrell worked his way up through the ranks in the car rental business.

They initially had planned to marry at Sorrell’s church in Hermosa Beach. “But we couldn’t connect with the pastor, and had difficulty booking a date, and it was very stressful,” says Dawson, who suffers from systemic lupus and was worried about her health. Plus, they wanted to marry before her graduation next month, and money was tight—in that respect, she joked, “we’re not the royal family.”

“After prolonging our date, we finally just decided to do it at the county,” she says. “I’ll be wearing a Grecian style gown, kind of a cream-white with jewels on it, and I’ll have my hair up.” Her mother and Sorrell’s cousin will witness, and the couple will leave immediately after the ceremony for a honeymoon in Las Vegas.

“It may not be Westminster Abbey, but I feel like royalty every day with my fiancé,” she says, laughing. “It’s wonderful to be in love.”

Posted 4/28/11