BROOKFIELD, Wis.
— At the top of the staircase, Sheryl Jesswein glanced in a large mirror to make sure her wedding dress and veil were in place. Before descending the steps to the chapel, she had one last thing to do. She placed her hand on a mausoleum niche, touching the name of her late father. “It was like he was giving me away,” Jesswein said. Cemetery weddings are rare, eyebrow-raising affairs, evoking goth images of black bridal dresses and gloomy grave-site gatherings. But Sheryl and Kurt Jesswein, who got married in 1990, are among a small number of couples who have held very traditional weddings in past decades at Wisconsin Memorial Park. A cemetery employee recently married there, and in 2007, a bride tied the knot near her buried grandmother. She wore her grandmother’s wedding dress.
Now cemetery officials want to rent their five chapels and reception hall with kitchen for not only wedding ceremonies but also wedding receptions, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, private parties, business events and training seminars.