REGINA – The bride waited nervously out of sight. The groom calmly smoked a cigarette and most of the 3,000 people at the Canadian Western Agribition exhibitors reception were unaware they would soon be witnessing a wedding.
Shirley Lake and Keath Brooks met at Agribition a couple of years ago so it was fitting they should be married here.
“I thought of it on a smaller scale though,” said Lake, scanning the crowded stadium before the ceremony Nov. 24. “All of a sudden it turned into this.
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“I thought we’d wear jeans and get married in one of the barns.”
But for Agribition’s first wedding ever – held during the show’s 25th anniversary – that wouldn’t do. Instead the stadium, ready for the horse halter and hitch shows, was chosen.
The guest list was taken care of by Agribition since all exhibitors were invited to the reception prior to the show’s official opening the next day.
And the bridal couple didn’t wear jeans, but opted for a dressier western look.
Lake and Brooks met thanks to a Texas Longhorn bull owned by Lake. She was showing him at the annual show and discovered the bull needed his hoofs trimmed.
Brooks, who has been a hoof trimmer for about seven years and Agribition’s boss for the Blonde D’Aquitaine cattle barn for five, was on the job.
They got reacquainted at last year’s show and have been together since.
“Shirley came up with the idea of getting married here,” Brooks said. “We’re both on the road a lot, so what better place?”
Both work for Atomic Transport, driving long hauls from Montreal to Vancouver.
“I’ve been there five years and Keath just started so I’m his boss,” Lake said.
The ceremony was performed by Rev. Henry Bogardt, a retired Lutheran minister from Regina. It was the first wedding he had performed in a dirt-filled stadium, but the aroma of horses didn’t bother him.
“A wedding is always a happy occasion,” he said diplomatically.
He wasn’t even sure this wedding qualified as the most unusual he has performed, although it was one of the largest. “I did do a motorcycle wedding once,” said Bogardt.
The ceremony went off without a hitch, so to speak, except for the background noise from the crowd.
“I guess that’s about as quiet as you can expect 3,000 people to be,” said Agribition executive vice-president Wayne Gamble.
